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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. l\ 



A DEFENCE OE IGNORANCE. 



y 

DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 



HOW TO MAKE HOME UNHEALTHY. 1 



yVX^yJsJLMj J^VtAf, 



"Many who will not stand a direct Reproof, and cannot abide to be plainly 
admonished of their Fault, will yet endure to be pleasantly rubb'd, and will patiently 
bear a jocund Wipe." — Barrow's Sermons against Evil Speaking. 



LONDON : 

CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 

1851. 






LONDON : 
BBADBUKV AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIABS. 



A DEFENCE OF IGNOKANCE. 



The Select Committee, which appointed itself to 
inquire into the State of Education in this country, 
and into any measures which may be required for 
the Defence of Ignorance, have talked over the 
matters to them referred, and have agreed to the 
following resolution : — 

Resolved. That it is the opinion of this Committee, 
That the Report of their proceedings may he 
now read and approved. 

The Report follows. 



The Committee dined. The ladies having with- 
drawn, the Chairman said : — This meeting, gentle- 
men, is of a social nature, and to be considered 
strictly private. Before we commence, therefore, let 
us instruct our secretary concerning fictitious names 
to be affixed to any speeches that he may report. — 
A Member begged leave to suggest that the secretary 

B 



Z A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

might be empowered to disguise, in his own way, the 
names of speakers ; at the same time, he thought 
that the Owl, a bird of Night and Wisdom, could be 
made godfather to all the company. The honourable 
secretary himself, who, as this committee's voice, 
would presently intrude upon the public ear, he 
begged permission to call Screech. Agreed. — The 
chairman, Ulula, then pouring out a glass of wine, 
requested silence, and began — 

The Opening Address. 

Gentlemen, — Bre meant a " mountain " in old 
Cornish. The Phoenicians, who got some of their tin 
from Cornwall, distinguished it as " Bre tin," from the 
same metal obtained elsewhere. Tin is a word that 
runs through many languages with trifling change ; 
here tin, there zinn, and somewhere else etain. And 
so this country became known to the Phoenicians, and 
also through them to others, as the land of Bre tin — 
Britain. This interpretation is a wholesome one, 
which nourishes and very much plumps out a modern 
use of the word Tin. An affectionate and thoughtful 
people finds in its first article of commerce a familiar 
name for money. The Japanese do something of this 
kind. Their savage forefathers subsisted on a shellfish 
called Awabi, so in their wealth they now serve up 
Awabi in their feasts, and add Awabi to their gifts. 
It is their salt water forget-me-not. We get our 
sentiment from flowers, they get theirs from fish. 



A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 6 

You, if you please, may say molluscs ; I won't. I 
broke a tooth yesterday in talking botany, and must 
avoid zoology to-day. Our gold and silver, we rich 
folk might symbolise by rose and lily, but we don't. 
We think of our poor ancestors and call the money 
Tin. 

Bretin or Britain, then, is a Tin Mountain, or Mass 
of Tin or Heap of Money. We have collared Ety- 
mology and got a fact. This country is prosperous 
down to the very roots. 

The chairman pausing, it was understood that he 
desired applause. The members of the committee 
helped themselves to figs and filberts, and, when 
silence was restored, our host resumed with ani- 
mation : 

We have wealth. What does a man mean by 
wealth ? He means weal with a th, I fancy, or if he 
does not mean it, he says it ; and why does he say 
it : I must take for granted it is what he means. 
Weal signifies that which is well. And th after such 
a word ? In Dr. Latham's grammar, those who 
read such trumpery are told that it " supplies the 
force of an abstract idea." Wealth then i3 the 
abstract idea of that which is well. You cannot now 
stand up and tell me that it means a gross material 
or muck. You may do so, for you are capable of 
anything. But your conscience takes inevitably 
down its throat, as out of a physic spoon, the con- 
clusion that, in this country, all is well — all in ideal 

b 2 



4 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

perfection — although some of us are not contented to 
let well alone. 

Buho. Sir, you are merely firing peppercorns into 
the hostile body. 

Ulula. They may cause it, sir, to scratch. I am 
now loading with a piece of china. 

We have an intimate knowledge of the Chinese, 
from often meeting with them on our cups and 
saucers. They have no idea of us. At the beginning 
of our late glorious and high-minded war with China, 
the Centre of the Universe informed his soldiers that 
their great object should be to make the English 
tumble down. If it were only by beating gongs, or 
by frightening them, so that they caused them to fall 
down, that would suffice ; for if the English fell they 
could be taken. The clothes of English soldiers, 
said the Brother of the Sun, are made so tight that 
those who are in them when they tumble down are 
quite unable, by any struggling, to get up again. 
And so the Chinese thought to ship off Englishmen 
at leisure, like the turtles, after they had once been 
thrown upon their backs. 

And yet these Chinese are an educated people. 

Civetta. What a warning to us ! Since that war 
we have learned something about them. They make 
soup of slugs; eat lizards, toads; and if they had 
such things, I dare say, they would stew a five-barred 
gate ; the catalogue is small, of things that are not 
eaten by a Chinaman. 



A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. O 

Ulula. Now these ridiculous Chinese are Educa- 
tionists. Ridiculous, I call them ; insignificant. 
Tell me that without China, Europe would not 
have been ; that if the Chinese had not flung aside 
the Huns, the Huns would not have knocked 
against the Goths, the Goths would not have knocked 
down Rome, and so on; I say, Pooh ! My wife's silk 
dress she would have bought at an Alarming Failure 
without Chinese intervention. As for tea, we were 
much better men when we had beer for breakfast. 
I laugh the Chinese to scorn, and I will not believe 
that they invented Punch. Pun-tse, the Son of an 
Inch, may beat his Chinese Judy. I believe that 
some Chinaman must have been in England about 
the time of the Saxon heptarchy, and have seen 
Punch performed. Or how do we know that the 
Phoenicians when importing tin from our shores did 
not import from the same place into Asia Punch's 
shows. Nay more, are we certain that a fossil Punch 
will not be discovered, in the Stonesfield slate, or in 
the London clay ? At any rate the Chinese are 
ridiculous, and I will let you see down to the bed of 
their transparent folly. 

They are mighty educators. To every joss house 
they attach a school. So far, it is well that their 
schools are connected with their churches. But the 
absurdity of the Chinese takes all pleasure and excite- 
ment out of this arrangement, because they have not 
sense enough to make their joss houses like Christian 



D A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

churches, tents of warriors at bitter odds with one 
another. These Chinese day-schools are supported 
by the government, and by parents, according to 
their ability. There is one master to twenty or 
thirty boys, and there he sits, with spectacles not 
much smaller than saucers on his nose, a pipe in his 
mouth, a teapot at his fingers' ends, and a great 
noise in his ears. For nearly all the boys are learn- 
ing their lessons aloud, each at his own little table ; 
a mischievous young rascal is fingering his master's 
tail to the infinite disturbance of a dunce who is 
endeavouring to shriek his lesson down the master's 
ear. Boards are for slates, and brushes dipped in 
Indian ink serve for slate pencil. Writing is prac- 
tised by aid of transparent paper, and a big cane 
lashes the master's table now and then, making the 
saucers jump and little Chinese hearts jump with them. 
But the Chinese do worse than this They have in 
each province a chancellor of learning, class all people 
in their educational degrees, and reserve posts of 
trust and honour and emolument, for whom ? The 
well-born man ? No, for the raw student ! In a 
great hall of education, surrounded by groves and 
gardens, sit dominies at certain periods in each 
large town, to inquire into the proficiency of candi- 
dates for the first degree of Sew Tsae or " flowering 
talent." Not to have entered this class is to want 
respectability in Chinese eyes. They who have been 
admitted are exempt from being whipped, except 



A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 7 

by order of the emperor or of his representatives. 
They who have thus redeemed their skins, may at a 
future time present themselves for a severer scrutiny, 
at a solemn triennial examination. They who in this 
have satisfied the strict examiners, become Kew Jin, 
" promoted men," and are entitled — to wear boots ! A 
higher degree is offered every three years to those 
booted men who seek to win spurs at Pekin. 
Poverty excludes none from coming to present 
themselves. The emperor pays the expenses of 
poor victims. They who pass this third examina- 
tion become "introduced scholars," Tsin Se; 
and the three best at each examination are re- 
warded by the Brother of the Sun in his own person. 
For these there is finally reserved a short rope, if 
they seek a higher elevation. They who pass the 
examination of Ran Lin, " ascended to the top of the 
tree," are all the servants of the emperor, and are in 
due time chosen to the highest offices of state. 
Education is the road to fame, and these are its four 
stages. 

Screech. The only thing that saves the Chinese 
from extravagance of ridicule is the fact that they 
do tie up education within limits, making it depend 
upon a more or less accurate knowledge of certain 
time-honoured books. Just as in Oxford we read 
Aristotle, so they read also their classics. 

Ulula. If the Chinese defined education in ac- 
cordance with the crotchets of our English innovators, 



8 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

as a trained spirit of enquiry, the Flowery Land 
would long ere this have run to seed. However, as 
it is, the Chinese certainly have gone quite far enough 
to make themselves fit objects for our ridicule. 
When we wish to become laughing-stocks we may 
begin to build from their designs. 

CrvETTA. This cry for education is the neighing of 
a hobby-horse. What is there that a perverted en- 
thusiasm will not hope to build? I could name a clever 
builder, now dead, who believed the Millenium to be at 
hand ; he looked forward to the erection of the Xew 
Jerusalem, and studied Ezekiel professionally, made 
calculations, and completed all the plans which he 
intended to send in at once, when tenders were 
demanded for the rebuilding of the Temple. So 
certain Education-mongers have drawn up some 
schemes, but they will not be called for. We may 
look over your projections, gentlemen, your elevations 
and ground-plans, but your phantom schoolmasters 
we banish from this realm of fact : on snowy plains 
of paper let them wander up and down, the masters 
of their own Siberia. 

Screech. As for awakening a spirit of enquiry, that 
I am quite sure is what no sensible man would desire : 
it is a thing always absurd. A spirit of enquiry means 
a pertinacity in putting foolish questions. There is 
none more foolish than the Education question. Our 
Royal Society wrote, once upon a time, to Sir Phili- 
berto Vernatti, then residing in Batavia, to ask 



A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. y 

whether it was true, that in Java there were oysters 
"of that vast bigness as to weigh 3 cwt." These 
were your learned men. People whose mouths are 
agape for oysters of that size must be prepared to 
swallow anything. Knowledge is hungry and greedy ; 
Ignorance fasts and is content. 

Civetta. The tiresome greediness of Knowledge is 
pourtrayed awfully in men who are attacked by the 
schoolmaster while in a state of nature. This was the 
case with the natives of the Navigators Islands, where 
the missionaries rang their bell and summoned all the 
natives into school. The consequence was, Mr. 
Walpole tells us, — in his book, " Four Years in the 
Pacific," — that Europeans walking in the woods were 
pounced upon at any unexpected time by savages, who 
brandished not clubs but slates about their heads, and 
shouted, " Do my sum ! " Frederic Walpole had his 
"walks made weariful with sums." "One fellow, 
with a noble head, used to bring him regular puzzlers." 
The victim, in revenge, set his tormentor some algebra 
to do, in the hope that this would keep him quiet ; 
but after a few days he came again, together with ten 
others, making a fierce hullabaloo : they all brought 
slates, and came to get the problem solved : — " You 
do it." 

Ulula. Can flesh and blood live to be told 
of absurdities and miseries like these bred out of 
foreign Education and not stir in the Defence of 
Ignorance at home ! With how deep contempt must 



10 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

we regard those baby savages in the wild forests of 
the tropics, when we contemplate the men of our own 
towns and fields ? Half of us, thank Heaven, cannot 
make figures ; yet see how Great Britain has 
prospered. I wonder whether those savages feel our 
superiority ; whether they know, that in the country 
out of which their teachers come, Eight Millions of 
the people cannot read and write. 

This is a triumphant fact : here I may say stop, 
you tell me. 

" Basta cosi ; t' intendo : 
Gia ti spiegasti a pieuo ; ' 
E mi diresti rnetio, 
Se mi dicessi piu." 

Buho. Shame, sir ! Order, sir! "What jargon's 
that? 

Ulula. 'Tis perfectly in order, Buho. You are 
fidgetty. The tongue they speak in Naples has a 
claim upon us. [Hear, hear ; with murmurs of 
Translate.) 

Good ; you have said enough, you 've explained 
yourself perfectly well now : 

And you would tell me less, were you to say any 
more. — That 's the translation, gentlemen. Buho, a 
glass of wine with you ? Gentlemen, I have introduced 
the subject, and suggest that we discuss it now 
somewhat in detail. Let us take first, if you please, 

Egncrance of t$e iBrtiule OTIassfS. 

How does our account stand as regards that ? 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 11 

Gentlemen, you are perhaps aware that our friend 
on my right, whom I will be so bold as to call 
Aziola — 

Screech. Our friend has views to state, I believe, 
of which he will suffer us to doubt the soundness. 

Aziola. Mr. Chairman, you refer to me sarcasti- 
cally. You hint, I suspect, at Shelley's line about 
the Aziola : — " Fear not, 'tis nothing but a little 
downy owl." "Fear not," indeed! I ridicule 
myself. I have no hope of ever seeing what I wish, 
and, being desperate, I join your party. So I take 
the name you give in all good humour. 

Screech. Spoken manfully ! But much I wish 
you had more cause for your despair. Ignorance does 
not seem to me to have a firm grasp of the Middle 
Class. As for Knowledge, there can be no doubt 
that men do learn more or less during the course of 
life, according to their leisure. It pains me to know 
that a degraded press, degraded but prolific, allures 
too many of my neighbours with her wanton smile. 
They who have leisure enough amass, in this 
way, a great deal of desultory knowledge ; and 
regret that no shelves have been put up in their heads 
whereon they might arrange their stock. By picking 
daily at the fruit of the forbidden tree, many folks 
come to possess a store of apples in their garret. I 
am shocked at this : but if they will err, on their 
own mature heads be the sin. 

Aziola. Few of them can say that, in their child- 



12 



A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 



hood, great pains were not taken to deter them from 
such robbery. 

Screech. The children of the Middle Classes go 
to school. 

Aziola. Their school is, generally speaking, part 
of our Defence. In the Middle Ages, when above 
Europe it was night, these men stood high, and 
used the utmost light procurable. As civilisation 
dawned, they sank ; they are like Pteropods, that 
have a wide sea for their home, and sport at mid- 
night on the surface, but sink lower in the water 
gradually, as the day advances, so that they preserve 
around themselves one exact shade of gloom. 

The teacher who would cure me of despair, must 
love the sun and sunny faces. He must droop 
before a mournful child. Like Jean Paul Richter, 
when he sees a child with gloomy features, he must 
think of it as of a butterfly, with its wings plucked 
and obliged to crawl. He must not copy any plan 
of teaching out of books, although he may digest 
the thoughts of others ; for, can he not eat mutton 
without crying baa ? 

Boho. Out with your heart, man. Picture any- 
thing that 's hopeless, for between ourselves, dear 
sir, it will be a quaint joke to paint in detail grapes, 
for the annoyance of some hungry bird. 

Aziola. Of course, you teacher, you must under- 
stand the nature of a child. A fellow with a stick in 
his hand shouts out, " Why, so I do ! " Look away. 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 13 

master, from the knuckles of that cringing, wincing 
boy ; look back into the past some centuries, and see 
the Master of us all with children in his arms, and at 
his feet, declaring that their angels see his Father's 
face in heaven. With that wail in your ears, and that 
cane in your hand, dare you look back so far, and say 
you reverence a child ? The teacher who is not 
allied to Ignorance, must love all children, heartily 
and unaffectedly ; must be a child, as well as man, 
himself. You see him in his school-room, where he 
treads on carpets or on matting, where the walls 
around him wear a cheerful paper, and neat tables 
and chairs await the childish students. The best 
room in his house — the room that lets in the most 
light and pleasure through the windows — is the room 
devoted to the occupation of his children. 

They are young, and they know little ; but the 
teacher's mind is very full indeed if he has not felt 
the necessity of studying from day to day, to meet 
their daily various requirements. Here they come ; 
not a vast crowd of them, for though John Smith 
might undertake the care of fifty sheep, he cannot 
undertake in one day to supply the wants of fifty 
children all unlike each other. At the utmost, he 
can teach a score with a congenial assistant. They 
who confide in him know that, and, of course, will 
take care that his services are paid for properly, 
without a grudge. 

But here they come ; with chatter, laughter, and 



14 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

good-will, with not a particle of fear. The youngest 
is immediately crawling up the legs of his instructor ; 
Smith is converted into a Laocoon, struggling good- 
humouredly with serpent children. Pretty discipline! 
Do you not scowl with me ? You will find worse 
behind, for school had not begun. Now it begins. 
No cane, no desk, no high stool ! 

Ulula. Without these, is instruction possible ? 
Here is the flesh of school, without the skeleton. 
It cannot stand. 

Aziola. The teacher sits where children sit, or 
walks among them. Study begins ; perhaps the 
morning and the fresh attention are devoted to 
those studies which, though not least needful, are 
the least inviting, and more pleasant subjects come 
as the day flags. Conversation, open utterance, 
is not forbidden. How can a teacher pretend 
to form a child's mind when he forbids it to 
be spoken ? In a silence broken only by words 
learned out of a book, how is it possible that the 
chief object of education can be obtained at all ? So 
says John Smith, and the work goes on. The 
children fidget, shift their places, and are suffered 
freely so to do : it is the instinct of their childhood. 
They openly make boats and chip at wood, and play 
with paper, when their hands are not employed. 
Allegiance to childhood is not insubordination. So 
they work cheerfully, and know themselves at school 
to be free agents, doing a duty. At the end of every 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 15 

hour's work, they scamper out to scream and play at 
leapfrog. Recalled, they scamper hack as rapidly as 
if there were a cane for the last comer. 

Morning has been spent in languages, arithmetic, 
or algebra, and exercises which demand labour of 
which the pleasant fruit is not immediately to be 
gathered. It has imposed upon the children mental 
toil. The afternoon is full of mental pleasure. The 
history of man's deeds and works and the wonders 
of nature engage childish hearts more powerfully. 
Not as detailed in skeleton books. A dinner of dry 
bones makes no man fat. The teacher predetermines 
that he will occupy perhaps three years in a full 
narration of the story of the world. He begins at 
the first dawn of history, studies for himself with 
patient diligence upon each topic the most correct 
and elaborate records (for which purpose he requires 
aid of a town library), and pours all out in one 
continued stream from day to day, enlivened by a 
child-like style. The children comment as the story 
runs ; the teacher finds a hint sufficient at a time by 
way of moral, he is rather willing to be taught by 
the experience of what fresh hearts applaud or 
censure on the old worn stage of life. Natural 
history and science, all the -ologies, and -tics, and 
-nomies, succeed each other, also, as a three years' 
story of the wisdom which begot the world. Foreign 
countries, not dismissed in a few dozen of the driest 
existing sentences, are visited in company with 



16 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

pleasant travellers. Clever, good-humoured books of 
travel, carry the imaginations of the children round 
the world. In all these latter studies they take lively 
interest, remembering, to a remarkable extent, what 
they hear. On every point they have spoken freely 
in the presence of a teacher not desirous to create 
dull copies of himself, but to permit each budding 
mind to throw out shoots and spread its roots 
according to its own inherent vigour. He manures 
and waters, watches to remove all parasitic growths, 
but the true, healthy mind, expands unchecked under 
his care. 

Screech. But will the children satisfy the patience 
of John Smith ? 

Aziola. Will the rose bear colours which he did not 
paint — the petal of the pink have notches that he did 
not cut ? If he be nervous, fidgetty, exacting, he will 
grumble at the children frequently. He will some- 
times be fretted ; but when he is most himself he 
will perceive that he has nothing whereat he may 
justly fret. The children will regard him with 
affection and implicit trust. Their hearts have not 
been made ungentle ; therefore if they ever feel that 
they have vexed him, they themselves are penitent 
and vexed. 

Less as a prize than as a good-will offering, each 
child has a half yearly gift, not won by an unwhole- 
some rivalry, but containing a record in the first leaf 
of his half year's career. A childish offence during 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 17 

school hours it is John Smith's plan to call " an 
Interruption," and to say that three such Inter- 
ruptious are a half day lost, and six the losing of a 
whole day. In the first leaf of the half-yearly prize 
Smith writes the number of days lost by inattention. 
Discipline needs no more machinery than this. 
If Smith were perfect, even this would not be 
necessary. 

You are aware that I am not sketching the one model 
after which I would have enemies of Ignorance to shape 
their schools. The proper spirit being established, 
each teacher will put it in the form most suited to his 
character. But I set up an imaginary case, in order 
that I may, by connecting together some peculiarities 
consistent with each other, give you a notion of the 
grapes you talked about. Nobody but John Smith 
is capable of managing John Smith's school ; but 
fifty other ways of management may be conceived, 
equally efficacious ; all alike in feeling, in expression 
different. 

I have not done with Smith's contrivances. 
Another is this. He parts his children evenly into 
two sides, calling them, we will say, the Greens and 
Blues, after the two factions of the Roman Circus. 
For these sides also conduct races. Smith does not 
catechise his children, they examine one another. 
This mutual examination * takes place not less than 

* Southey tells us of a schoolmaster who in this way taught 
spelling. His is the idea. 



18 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

twice a week. Each side has in turn to ask a 
question of its antagonist, on anything that has been 
at any time a subject of the teaching common to 
them all. Gain and loss is calculated upon some 
fixed scale, and in the game the children take an 
active interest. Those who can finger a pen 
readily, take notes during the oral teaching ; all 
ears are alive to what is uttered, and at home 
books of reference are ransacked with a diligence 
that would be toil were it not self-imposed. To avoid 
personality of opposition the two «ides are occasionally 
shuffled. 

Screech. Can children collect their thoughts suffi- 
ciently to ask questions that are not frivolous ? 

Aziola. The experiment has been tried by a gentle- 
man whose plan is not unlike John Smith's, and who 
was persuaded to adopt Smith's crotchet of the Blues 
and Greens. He was so much surprised by the result 
that he determined to preserve a list of questions, 
writing down each of them in a book as it was asked. 
That book I borrowed and intend to keep. It contains 
questions asked by children between nine and fourteen 
years of age. Many refer, I understand, to information 
given them a year before they asked their neighbours 
for its reproduction. The book clears children of a 
misunderstanding under which it is to your interest 
that they should labour. 

Bcho. Lock it up, as an immoral production. 
Aziola. I will tell you, at random, six or seven 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 19 

of the questions as a sample ; — only think of 
this : — 

" Why is it colder as you rise into the air, though 
you get nearer to the sun ? ' ' 

" Give the course of the chief ocean currents over 
the world, with your finger, on the map." 

" When you cut off a caterpillar's head why can 
it go on eating ? " 

" What caused the sound made by the statue of 
Memnon?" 

"Name the seven household officers at the Court 
of Constantine the Great." 

" Explain the derivation of the words clergy and 
laity." 

"Describe and account for the circulation of the 
sap." 

Ulula. I trust, for the honour of Old England, that 
there are many schoolmasters who would decline to 
answer questions like these. When I say school- 
masters, I mean Preceptors, for there is a college of 
Preceptors now. 

Screech. Commended to all men byits polite name. 
Vulgar is the vocation of a Teacher, but " your sons 
Preceptor" is a gentleman. The Doctors, by-the- 
bye, clamour for a new corporate body, I trust that 
they also will be genteel, and get their charter for 
a new " College of Medical Advisers." 

Buho. It is high time that we talked a little sense. 
Enough of Smith. 

c 2 



20 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Aziola. My grapes are but half painted. 
Civetta. You need many tools to conjure with. 
Ulula. And, like all conjurors, talk 

" Nonsense, false, or mystic, 
Or not intelligible, or sophistic." 

It is agreeable enough to feel that the chance of 
education such as we have just now been discussing 
is extremely small in England. 

Civetta. But after all, as we grow stronger in the 
feeling that these things can never be, it seems 
absurd to talk about them. What is a greater bore 
than hearing dreams told ? When gnoos, sassaybies, 
and hartebeests, are to be found in Smithfield 
market, then we shall see those educators in our 
schools. Why do I specify gnoos, sassaybies, and 
hartebeests ? Because there is a fact established 
concerning these creatures, which I think would 
turn out true of the educators also, that on opening 
the head, their brain is almost invariably found filled 
with large white maggots. Certainly the maggots 
of eccentric teachers have no colour in them. 

Aziola. John Smith may be heard occasionally 
telling fairy stories to his children. 

Screech. Well he may ; for he is but an imp of 
Titania dropped by his mother in her hasty rush out 
of our premises ; or he is codicil to Oberon's last will 
and testament, by accident shut up inside our ledger. 

Civetta. Your fancies, John, are dead at present ; 
you may like to say that they are torpid, but we call 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 21 

them dead and buried under a heavy deposit of hard 
compact prejudice. Excavations may at some remote 
period take place, and your ideas may revive ; after 
the story of the cockles in America, there shall be 
hope even for you. This is the story of the cockles. 
Professor Eaton, of New York, related it in Silliman's 
Journal, and Mr. Sharon Turner augmented its 
respectability by quoting it in his Sacred History 
of the World. In digging the Erie Canal at Rome 
Village, sixteen miles from Utica, the workmen 
found, forty- two feet below the surface, under a 
diluvial deposit of hard compact gravel, hundreds of 
cockles, all alive. The workmen fried and ate these 
creatures, which must have existed in the days of 
Noah. In the days of Noah, you perceive. John, 
when your fancies have been buried for as long a 
time, they also may be dug up, and, by men who are 
to live four thousand years hereafter, it is possible 
that they may all be swallowed. 

Aziola. Another of John's fancies, — we might say 
his fundamental fancy — is to impress his children with 
an unlimited regard for Truth. He says that without 
Truth and Sincerity among each other and towards 
their teacher, his system cannot be fairly worked. 
Accordingly each of his pupils upon entering his 
school, has by some visible form the fact impressed 
upon him, that he will always be trusted, and that, 
however, all his other faults may be dealt gently 
with, falsehood will be regarded as a crime. 



22 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

John says he will refuse to teach a pupil who shall 
be found to offend more than once or twice in this 
particular. If it were possible that children should 
forget the candour which is natural to them for the 
sake of treading upon ground which they see to 
be regarded with so much dread and abhorrence, 
John Smith would keep his word. But the occasion 
never will be given. 

Buho. Very well ; now I begin to be a little in a 
rage at hearing so much nonsense. 

Aziola. You may have no need to storm, for I will 
throw John overboard : he is your Jonah. 

The spell, however, I must finish telliDg you. I 
tell you that to burst the bolts of Ignorance and give 
free movement to the education of the middle classes, 
teachers must be found not scattered but in swarms, 
quite different from those which swarm at present. 
They must not look upon the child's mind as a thing 
to be impregnated with Latin verbs, and trained into 
a deep disgust at Cicero, and sickening horror at 
Herodotus. It is a spirit to be trained to thoughtful- 
ness, and to be furnished with materials of thought 
(herein the use of history consists) : it should receive 
such views of the great world of knowledge as may 
make the youug mind long to become one day an 
active traveller therein ; and to be ready for the day 
of travel it should acquire activity and strength, with 
a fair notion of the routes that lie around us. The 
teacher who shall send a child into the world thought- 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 23 

ful, observant, seeking knowledge, and not shrinking 
from a little difficulty in obtaining it ; a youth with a 
free mind, taught to reason, and determined only 
upon truth, by whatever process he has come to 
that result ; he is the enemy of Ignorance. The pupil 
who has learned to teach himself will be the man to 
put your cause in danger, though he may have left 
school very backward in his Greek and Latin. 

Civetta. Dr. Thomas Williams, a member of the 
University of Cambridge, and Ph. D. of Pisa, does by 
no means neglect the Greek and Latin of " his young 
gentlemen " at Euclid Hall Academy. When Captain 
Harris exhibited his drawings of wild beasts to the 
Zooloos, they were amazed, and said, that " he 
undoubtedly took very strong medicine " before he 
could become so clever. Doubtless they knew how 
Englishmen are taught ? Very strong medicine and 
very nauseous is daily administered by Dr. Williams 
to his young gentlemen, whom by that means he 
hopes to make extremely wise. In an uncarpeted 
room, with dirty walls, the windows made opaque 
with paste, sit the recipients, fifty in number. They 
sit on forms that are immoveable, and they are 
expected to remain immoveable upon their forms. 
Their books are supported before them upon dull 
rows of unpainted, wooden desks, with inkstands fixed 
therein, about as far apart from one another as the 
raisins in the Sunday pudding. Dr. Williams 
struggles with nature to put bigness into his own five 



24 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

feet seven. He sits on a lofty throne, before a desk 
or altar, and to him the rows of worshippers look up. 
He might be Serapis, as the god appeared before his 
demolition. The gigantic idol, with his arms upon 
the temple roof, was no less a real god in the Serapion 
than here in his Williamsion, Williams is sublime. 
When the hollow metal of the idol broke under the 
profane hatchet of the iconoclast, the crack was 
thought to be the crack of doom. The worshippers 
shrank to the ground, cowering with fear : these 
worshippers of Williams even in their dreams would 
shudder at the thought of a bold hand or voice up- 
lifted against him. 

Buho. I met Williams, by-the-bye, one day at a 
dinner-party, and the five feet seven of his height 
seemed then to be by five feet six too much for him ; 
if he could have had but an inch of himself left, where- 
with to run into a mouse-hole, I believe that such a 
temple would have then sufficed. 

Civetta. A nod expresses the sublime will, quickly 
understood among an abject crowd. The first Greek 
class goes up. Twelve boys stand side by side, each 
holding a book which slightly trembles ; they stand 
before the desk ; if the cane were a sacrificial knife, 
a picture might be drawn of Williams as a savage 
priest about to offer twelve youths to the God of 
Ignorance. I grant that this is not agreeable, and 
I could wish that a most useful cause, like ours, could 
be maintained in the ascendant by means less repul- 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 25 

sive. But children seek for knowledge, and their 
eagerness must be repressed. The book which these 
youths hold is in each case the same, and open at the 
same page. It contains the plays of Sophocles. 
These boys have been dragged through grammar as 
through a cactus-bush. They know all about tvvtoj. 
Williams had not the consistency to say for them the 
active part, I strike, I have struck, I will strike ; he 
illustrated it, however, as they went along with clever 
cuts, and gave them a proper feeling of the passive 
form, I am struck, I have been struck, and so on. 
Delectus they were taught to find a choice of evils, 
and the Anabasis a going down into some lower deep. 
They had learned to wish that Homer's works were in 
a single copy, and so fell into their claws ; they knew 
what they would do, though they got flogged for it. 
They are now translating Philoctetes, wondering when 
Ulysses will be done with, for they are reading about 
him also with the French usher in Telemaque. As 
for the son of Poias the Melian, all they can make 
out is a connection between his sore foot and their 
sore hands. To this extent perhaps they recognise 
his claim to sympathy on their part, and also they 
can understand his hatred of Ulysses. Philoctetes 
agrees with the boys thoroughly about that, for Ulysses 
is the man 

" Whom of all other Greeks he would desire 
To lay his fist upon." 

The Greeks fight a hard battle, and retire to suck 



26 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

their wounds. Theirs is a daily Marathon, in as far 
as Williams, their enemy, is concerned ; for he has 
as much right as Isfundear ever had to be called 
Xerxes, and to he represented by his consonants as 
doubly cross, with a dog's growl and a goose's 
hiss. 

Buho. Fiddledee, sir ! But I call this wholesome 
discipline. 

Civetta. Wholesome ! Invigorating, bracing, the 
true tonic, my dear sir. I send four of my sods to 
Euclid Hall. The Greeks go down to suck their 
wounds, while they translate a passage of Shakspeare, 
"The quality of mercy," &c, into catalectic tetra- 
meters. Before the awful desk their place is taken by 
a small herd of wild boys, who have been hunted out 
of the fields of arithmetic, and over the hills of algebra, 
into the jungle of trigonometry. Here they are con- 
fused with sines and cosines, and abused with com- 
plements, tripped over tangents, nevertheless they 
must on, on, through a ditch of logarithms, breaking 
fences of parabolas, until they are lodged safely in the 
pitfalls of the differential calculus. 

Binns Minimus now suffers torment. In a bald 
book of geography, winch is little more than a bad 
index to the contents of the world political, Binns 
Minimus has sinned with many an imperfect lesson. 
He called a well-known Isthmus, yesterday, to the 
dismay of the English master, Suet. As a mild 
punishment he was ordered to learn his duty to man 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 27 

by nine o'clock on the succeeding morning. What is 
my duty to man, where is it ? asked little Binns, but 
Mr. Thunderbomb was silent. This morning the 
young gentleman is ignorant of his duty to his fellow- 
creatures, — not having remembered that it was to be 
found in the catechism, — the Doctor knows his duty 
to a boy, and so Binns Minimus now suffers torment. 
The days are past wherein John Jacob Hauberle could 
flourish. That worthy's diary of punishment, as 
quoted by Jean Paul, yielded through half a century 
of teaching 911,527 strokes with the cane ; 124,000 
of the rod ; 20,989 blows with the ruler ; 10,235 
boxes on the ear, with 7905 tugs ; 1,115,800 raps 
with knuckles on the head, to say nothing of the 
wooden horse, and kneeling on hard peas. Those 
good old times are past, and flogging now is very 
much on the decline. Dr. Williams frequently tells 
his boys that caning is as painful to him as it is to 
the pupil suffering. Since fifty boys still yield him 
a good share of work, the amount of his self-flagella- 
tion is extremely serious. The Dominie might be 
St. Dominic. But as a Zooloo warrior, who had 
crossed the Cape frontier, declared his delight in 
sticking Dutchmen ; the spear slipped into their soft 
unctuous skin so much more luxuriously than into the 
thick hide of a native, that he would much rather, he 
said, stick Dutchmen than eat beef ; even so the 
hand of wrath may find a soothing outlet on the flesh 
of childhood. I never enjoyed sucking-pig so much 



28 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

as Dr. Williams seems to be enjoying now that ope- 
ration on Binns Minimus, which sends him away to 
where he may not even, like Arvalan, 

" In impotence of anger, howl, 
Writhing with anguish, and his wounds deplore." 

Buho. That impotence of anger is, in my mind, the 
great object of the flogging. Mere physical pain now 
and then does a child good, and is soon forgotten ; it 
will propagate no ignorance. What I like is to see 
a storm of anger raised in a child's heart against his 
teacher, all its winds tied up in a bag within him, 
without any hope of getting vent, except among his 
companions in spiteful nicknames and caricatures. 
Ignorance suffers when a child is taught through its 
affections. Therefore, I say, let us have none of that 
puling nonsense ; let us instil some pluck into our boys. 

Aziola. We do that when we pay a man to bully 
them, and teach them to tyrannise over each other. 

Ulula. Boys who have grown with greater freedom, 
who have been molly-coddled in your sentimental schools, 
will tumble about, shout, and play, like mere children 
— will, in their short anger, resent blow with blow ; 
and wrestle with each other out of mere animal 
joyaunce : as sanitary numskulls say, out of the 
activity of their muscular system in that period of 
life. A school so constituted never can become a 
model of the world, and preparation for it. Where 
are the rankling enmities, the party feuds, and the 
hot rivalries ? where is the gentlemanly tone of 



ICXOKANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 29 

feeling raised by this free delivery of a parcel of boys 
into the keeping of their own natural affectionate- 
ness? These bursts of passion, over so soon and 
unresented ; this simplicity of purpose, which prompts 
every one to speak truth, and believe his neighbour ; 
— is this any preparation for the tricks and triumphs 
of the grown-up world ? 

Screech. Certainly not. And as for the ground gone 
over by way of instruction, the more barren it is the 
better. Let the youngster learn the fallacy of hope, 
when, thirsty for instruction on all things surrounding 
him, he is mocked by a mirage of Greek. Let him 
find in school the dryness of a desert, and, frowning 
on the desert — monument of times that are no more 
— let the great Sphinx be his teacher. 

Civetta. I will not say more about Williams ; as he 
is a sphinx, you will excuse me for exhibiting his image 
only half uncovered. Of him I say, as our friend said of 
Smith, that he is not a counterpart of all his brethren. 
The friends of Ignorance assume shapes even more 
manifold than partisans of Knowledge. I do also 
regret to see, and am obliged to state with pain, that 
many schools which we could have pronounced to be 
unexceptionable twenty years ago, have suffered 
themselves to become corrupted. 

Aziola. Something, for example, is now studied of 
the works of God, where once there were no works 
looked into save those of Lindley Murray, Julius 
Caesar, and one or two more of their kidney. 



30 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Ulula. A mean yielding to pressure I call it, 
when I see men advertising that they keep scientific 
apparatus, and deliver lectures, at stated periods, 
on astronomy and chemistry. True, they know little 
of such subjects, and, if they knew much, could not 
impart it by their manner of lecturing. Yet they 
show experiments ; they make children, in that way, 
attentive and inquisitive ; I am afraid they interest 
them. True though it be that they reply to the 
asking of the knowledge-mongers, not with a fish, 
but with a stone : yet, if the stone be shaped and 
painted like a fish, it still becomes an interesting 
object ; and I regret to think that it may lead to 
a more imperious desire for the real animal. 

Buho. We have not yet gone too far to recede ; the 
cane is not dropped, though in some hands the grasp 
of it relaxes ; the child's head is still rapped by the 
teacher a hundred and fifty times for every once that 
it is sported over with a light caress. But I 
shout to you that I have felt the small end of the 
wedge. 

Civetta. That everlasting small end of the wedge 
gets introduced anywhere and everywhere. Harden 
yourselves against it and be happy. All is well with 
England, and with us, at present. When, like 
the Thessalian who sang against the nightingale, or 
like the nightingale who sang against St. Francis, 
the poet of Moses tightens up his braces for a contest 
against Dante, let him not despair. Before he 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 31 

sings the Paradise of Ignorance, copious materials 
exist for depicting such a Purgatory of School- 
masters, as an introduction to the sphere where 
ignorance is bliss, that our English poet who 
makes use of them may count upon the wonder of 
posterity. 

An allusion to the Sunday pudding may have led 
you to regard the fifty boys of Dr. Williams as 
boarders, and the dexterous phrase, " Here they 
come," suggested to me at least that the twenty 
children whom Smith teaches do not board with him. 
Mrs. Williams is a mother to her husband's fifty 
boys, over whose linen she hangs daily with affec- 
tionate solicitude ; the boys themselves she sees at 
dinner-time, and they look with longing eyes towards 
their mother, as she cuts the pudding. 

Aziola. Sm 

Bcho. Smith is a fool. 

Aziola. He says that there is no minute which 
suggests a thought to a child's mind by which 
it is not educated or drawn farther out of the blank 
state of babyhood. He says that it is well for a 
child to have daily intercourse, daily community and 
insensible comparison of thought, with other children ; 
that children find in each other their best playfellows. 
He prefers, therefore, greatly prefers, that a child 
should exercise his body and his mind abroad with 
schoolfellows, than that it should risk becoming 
sickly by home-nursing, like a garden plant kept in 



32 



A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 



a room too tenderly. But he believes in home. It 
pains him that parents, who are not ashamed to show 
their actions to their children, when they have it in 
their power to send them to a well-conducted school 
during the day, and, in the evening, can let father 
and mother he their companions, yet do not do so. 
That such children should he sent miles away, to 
live where the tenderest teacher could not possibly 
supply the place of home, Smith calls a great mistake. 
It is at home, says Smith, and not in a class at 
school reading the Testament, or catching flies in a 
school-pew, or learning collects by a school-room fire, 
that children can be made truly devotional. The 
child can kiss true prayer, word by word, from its 
mother's lips ; when older, it can appreciate a 
father's rectitude, a mother's acts of self-denial, or 
take part, with a warm heart, in the household devo- 
tion of its parents. So Smith objects to boarding- 
schools ; but as all parents do not live near a teacher 
who is capable of answering their children's wants, 
he cannot quite exclude the system. Individually, 
he declines to be responsible for more than three or 
four ; that is to say, for so many as may, without dis- 
proportion, enter into the composition of a family, 
and form a copy of home not too ridiculously out of 
drawing. Even of these three or four, it would 
delight him if some or all had homes not so remote 
as to prevent them from being, on Saturday 
and Sunday nights, in bed, under the care of 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 33 

those who watched their cradles. Home has its 
lessons — 

" Beauty and virtue, 
Fatherly cares and filial veneration, 
Hearts which are proved and strengthened by affliction, 
Manly resentment, fortitude, and action, 

"Womanly goodness ; 
All with which Nature halloweth her daughters, 
Tenderness, truth, and purity and meekness, 
Piety, patience, faith and resignation, 

Love and devotement." — 

Must the child be, month after month, excluded from 
his part in these domestic studies ? That is how 
Smith preaches. 

Buho. Who should be a poet or a parson. Evi- 
dently he is not a married man. 

Ciyetta. You have observed, also, that I spoke 
always of Williams and his Boys ; Smith had his 
Children. 

Aziola. Aha ! you say, observing the inclusive 
nature of the term, that rascal Smith is educating 
boys and girls together. You are right again. I 
blush to say that so he is. I am surprised that 
Nature should produce us boys and girls to grow 
together in one family. For adults of opposite sex 
to meet promiscuously at church, at theatres, and 
balls ; for adult gentlemen to put their arms round 
adult ladies, and twirl about with them, is what 
only a puritan could grumble at ; for we adults 
are never naughty : but that little girls should 



34 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

play and learn with little boys — perhaps run after 
them — my modesty is overcome by the idea. Fancy 
a little girl running after a little boy : do we do 
things like that, I wonder, in the grown-up world? 
No ; in the teaching of children, the two sexes must 
be marked by the strongest lines of separation, and I 
am myself too thoroughly delicate even to talk about 
them both, without a blush, in the same sentence. 

An Owlet [from the bottom of the table). Mr. 
Chairman, it occurs to me that we ought not to 
profess open Defence of Ignorance. Can't we be 
advocates of Moderate Enlightenment ? 

Ulula. That would be idle, sir. March-of-Intel- 
lect-boys have to be antagonised. We have been 
terribly warned of late. The Continent of Europe 
has, within the present century, been overspread 
with schools, and we have lately seen the con- 
sequences — frightful revolutions. Sir, the time is 
come when every strong mind must take its place, 
either on the right hand or on the left. The time is 
gone by for a timid policy. We would not live to see 
the good old institutions of our country swept away. 
To resist the spirit of change, we must resist the 
spirit of knowledge. Perhaps, under other circum- 
stances, we might have been ready to make various 
concessions to the educator ; now, our safest refuge 
is a bold antagonism. We must invade, or be in- 
vaded. We throw off a mask, and strike the blow. 

Aziola. Why do you make fuss ? We are in no 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 00 

more danger of an Educated England, than we are of 
Healthy Homes. 

Ulula. Why do we make a fuss then ? Why does 
any body make a fuss ? If there be humbugs abroad 
trading on the sanitary cause, and fidgets ever on 
the move are getting up an Education movement, 
threatening to break our rest, must we not show 
how strong we are, to frighten these poor gentle- 
men ? It is all very fine, you say, to spar and 
strike out when there is nobody to fight. What do 
they make such a noise for, then ? We ought to 
show them that we are not to be bullied ; proper 
dignity requires, as Lord John Russell says of 
Popery, which is as near to us as education is, that 
we leap forward, backward, or to one side, I forget 
which, and put ourselves in a defensive attitude. 
There 's chapter and verse for you. That is just 
what we are doing here in the Defence of Ignorance. 

Screech. That the ignorance of the middle classes 
is in a sound and safe state for the present, we can 
see by the bitterness of party, and the durability of all 
manner of misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are 
the stones which macadamise the road of life; our way 
without them would be tedious from the excess of 
softness. Now I have seen reason to suspect that 
Knowledge impresses on its victims a belief that 
nobody is all wrong or all right. That opposite lines of 
belief or conduct may run over the land of truth, and 
that it is honest for a man to travel upon either ; 

d 2 



36 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

that so a man going to Birmingham need not 
necessarily spit at a man going to Bath. The 
victims of knowledge may at last be brought into a 
state of such great wickedness, that they doubt the 
entire depravity of man. They almost doubt whether 
any human being would fail to get the sympathy of 
another who should be cognisant of all his thoughts 
and all his springs of action. They say that nine- 
tenths of the quarrels they have witnessed would 
have dropped immediately, if each party had seen 
nakedly the other's mind, and either have resulted in 
absolute unanimity, or friendly opposition of opinion. 
They say that if there were no ignorance there would 
be no party heat, and if there were no party heat 
there would be no ignorance. This is a pretty 
argument, you cannot catch it by the tail ; like the 
snake of eternity its tail is in its mouth, it is a 
perfect circle. 

Ulcla. So may Ignorance exist for ever. 

Aziola. If knowledge is to put an end to all mis- 
understanding, and cause us to see that every man 
and woman is a good sort of fellow after all, who will 
there be left to i;npute bad motives to good designs, 
to carry and credit scandal, to accuse Catholics of a 
desire to burn the Protestants, and Tories of a wish 
to trample on the poor, and Radicals of a desire to 
rush at anything that merits veneration ? If nobody 
is to have enemies, where will be our patience and 
forgiveness ; when we are all so good to one another 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 37 

as a better knowledge promises to make us, we shall 
be as dull as pigeons in a pie. It could be no duller 
11 down among the dead men." 

Civetta. Chiron found it a bore to live for ever, 
Lucian says, and so he quashed his immortality, but 
found, poor fellow, death also monotonous. What 
should we do if we were all so good and wise that we 
could not even take wit-sauce to our wisdom. " Qui 
vit sansfolie, nest pas si sage quil le croit" Let 
me be ignorant. 

But let us seek a wise man after our own heart, 
who sees a great deal farther than your ordinary 
knowledge-monger. Let us go to Zadkiel, and buy 
at five and twenty guineas each a pair of his delight- 
ful crystals ; or no, — that will be too expensive, — let 
us hire a clairvoyante, to show to us the inside of 
Brown's head. Our friend Brown is a gentleman 
who has received in his youth a good classical and 
commercial education. I believe that he has for- 
gotten everything, of which the knowledge has not 
been ensured by practice ; every thing but reading, 
writing, and so much arithmetic as enters into his 
daily life. I know that he has of late picked up a 
good deal of information from daily and weekly 
journals, which unhappily are pandering to a base 
desire for information. Much that he reads I doubt 
whether he understands, however, and that is lucky. 
1 am sure that he was never taught to think correctly, 
or to take what they call, in the jargon of the day, 



38 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

" comprehensive views." He is a studious man, 
however, and extremely deep in heraldry ; that is 
his hobhy. Well, Miss Fathomall, will you be good 
enough — yes ; here is your fee — will you be good 
enough to place your lily white hand on our friend 
Brown's bald pate. He has a noble head, you see. 
Now, Brown, go to sleep. He will not, Miss ; he is 
a very wide awake fellow, but it does not matter. 
Think away, Brown, while I take the lady's other 
hand ; think over all you know ; if any gentleman or 
lady will take my other hand, and somebody take his 
or her other hand, and so on, we can make a chain, 
and the current of Brown's thoughts will pass through 
us all. dear no ; Brown is a decent man, you 
will experience no shock. He is taking stock of all 
his information : Greek, there 's a dual number, and 
a tense called aorist, and one verb in the grammar 
is rvTrrio, there 's Aeschylus, and there 's Herodotus, 
and there 's a war called Peloponnesian and Xerxes. 
Latin, I know some, — let me see — " bis dat qui cito 
dat," "ingenuas didicisse,"&c, and there's "post hoc 
non propter hoc," and there 's "sic vos non vobis," 
which goes on melliki — something, but it is not usual to 
quote the rest, so it don 't matter my not knowing it. 
I know a whole line, by-the-bye, " fortunati 
minimum sua si bona norint." Come, that would 
fetch something in the House of Commons. I think 
it's from Ovid. There's the Augustan age, and Corio- 
lanus. Brutus goes with liberty and Tarquin's 



IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 39 

ravishing strides, — a verb agrees with its nominative 
case. English history, there 's Arthur — round table 
— Alfred burnt oatcakes — Henry VIII. had a number 
of wives, was the son of Queen Elizabeth, who wore 
a stiff frill and didn 't marry. George III. had two 
prime ministers, Horace Walpole and Mr. Pitt, 
The Duke of Wellington and Napoleon, and Waterloo, 
also Trafalgar and Rule Britannia — 0, and there 'a 
Aristotle, shone in a number of things, generally 
safe to mention. Plato and friendly attachment — 
Mem. avoid mentioning Plato, there 's something 
about a republic, on which I don 't feel safe when 
it 's occasionally mentioned. Botany : sap, the blood 
of trees — the leaves of flowers are called petals — 
also parts called pistils, which I could make a pun 
upon if I knew what they were — cosines in algebra, 
the same, which would make play with cousins — plus 
and minus, more and less — there 's a word, rationale, 
don 't know whether French or Latin, but extremely 
good to use — foreign politics I don 't make much 
cf, not understanding history of foreign countries. 
Germans, I know, dreamy — Klopstock — know his 
name, and think he was a drummer. Gerter was 
great. And I think there 's an Emperor Barbarossa, 
but, Mem., be cautious, for I 'm not sure whether 
that 's not the name of an animal. Understand 
animals, having been twice to the Zoological Gardens. 
Have read Shakspeare — not Milton, but it 's safe to 
praise him. Fine, a good epithet to apply to him. 



40 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Know a good glass of claret. Lots of anecdotes — 
I '11 tell you one. Once at a bar dinner, there was 
an Irish barrister who chanced never to have tasted 

olives Miss Fathornall removes her hand, bar 

dinner stories hurt her. 

Well, Brown, you need not look crossly at me. I 
know that it is as you say; you have got on very well in 
the world upon your stock of knowledge. You are a 
man with no humbug about you. You have done 
your duty, stuck to business, and are exceedingly 
well off, you can tell me. I know it, shake hands, 
Brown. I like to shake hands with a man who is 
well off. How are you, Brown ? Beautiful weather? 



Ulula. Thank you, Civetta ; you are quite a 
Matthews. Not a Mathew: fill your glass, and let 
us have the bottle. Well, we may wind up this topic. 
The tendency to relax discipline, and introduce 
what march-of-intellect men style useful knowledge, 
threatens in time seriously to corrupt our schools. 
The direction taken by journalism in the present day 
also, and the prevailing spirit of our newspapers is 
extremely alarming ; most of them are marching in 
hostility to Ignorance, and in a straight line towards 
her fortress. Indirect Education has diffused much 
information and awakened much intelligence among 
the middle classes. We must face the danger. The 
great gate of the Castle of Ignorance, if I may speak 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 41 

figuratively, is that which opposes education of the 
poor. We should perhaps have opened with this 
part of our question, but at any rate we will discuss 
it now. Civetta, you are prepared, I think, to in- 
troduce the subject. While you are warm, go on, 
and make another speech. 

Civetta. Warm, sir ! — Castle of Ignorance ! gates ! 
Mr. Chairman, permit me too to be figurative, and 
compare our structure to that castle in the Faerie 
Queene with a huge fire in the entrance, which 
the knight, Scudamour, was unable to cross. There, 
you see, are our gates of thick iron glowing 
in a white heat. They need no bolt, for the thief 
must be made of asbestos who would dare to touch 
them. They are heated by a furnace of religious 
zeal, which has been built just under their threshold, 
and it is marvellous to see upon them letters black 
as coffin-lids in spite of the surrounding glow, as if 
they had been written there with a huge finger 
dipped in Night : 

Ignorance of tfje $oor* 

These gates you see are not easily to be flung open. 
Touch them but ever so little, and I warrant you will 
burn your fingers. What if I do burn mine ; my 
fancy is already fired. It must blaze out. I long to 
lay a hand upon these gates, and to caress them for 
five minutes. I should not be happy if you 
hindered me. There are some things that no 



42 A DEFENCE OF IGNORAKCE. 

man willingly would die and leave undone, and if 
he did die, be would desire to get up from his grave 
to do them. So it was with Saint Bonaventura, 
whom death called away before he had finished the 
last chapter of his life of Saint Francis. He could 
not sleep in his coffin for thinking of his interrupted 
work, so at last he rose, and his corpse came home to 
his old study, took a pen and ink, and wrote for three 
days, till the book was finished, then returned into 
the grave, able to tuck itself up comforta bly. 

Let me alone ; I will not blister myself much. 
How I enjoy this heat ! that I could wriggle my- 
self like a Salamander through the glowing coals, and 
nestle in the hottest corner of the furnace ! It is 
so beautiful to think that Christians should have 
settled from the beginning, that love to God and man, 
faith, hope, and charity are the mere superfluity and 
fat of their religion — that which gives roundness and 
beauty to the outline, while the flesh and bone con- 
sist in a scientific knowledge of the nature and the 
attributes of God. How very bony, too, some of us 
are ; all bone and fibre ; with but little fat to hamper 
us, and be a clog on our extreme activity. 

Since the first days, when, as an early father 
writes, all the post-horses of the Roman empire were 
engaged by bishops, scampering about in search of 
the true religion. Since those first days until the 
last, how many theories have been pronounced by some 
party the only ropes whereby men could be pulled up 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 



43 



into heaven. And there were always other parties to 
declare these ropes mere halters — instruments of 
ignominious and certain death. Delicious is the fire 
of theologic zeal which wants the latitude and lon- 
gitude of Heaven, takes the measurement of Satan's 
tail, sets brothers quarrelling about a pinch of mint, 
and, not unmindful of the Sermon on the Mount, en- 
deavours to make all men blessed, by taking care that 
they shall all be reviled and persecuted, and have all 
manner of evil said against them falsely for the sake 
of the religion which their hearts adopt. 0, Metho- 
dist ! revile the Church ; 0, Church ! revile the 
Methodist ; 0, Catholic ! revile them both ; 0, both 
of ye, revile the Catholic. So keep this furnace hot. 
and let no mortal hand push at this gate. Ignorance 
of the poor ! be thou a barrier for ever. 

Excuse a trifle of enthusiasm, sir, for how can I 
regard this glorious Defence of Ignorance without a 
sentiment of generous emotion ? And I know, too, 
that upon the furnace down there fresh coals have 
been thrown by the Pope only this minute. As they 
fell, did I not hear the furnace leap and crackle ? 
Presently the gates will glow with double fierceness. 

It may be said that the Pope had no business to 
throw fresh coals upon our fire — that it was hot 
enough without his interference. This oven is so hot, 
that it invariably scorches those who venture near 
enough to feed it. As for the Pope's coals, our 
enemies — the Educationists — would like to have a pair 



44 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

of long tongs wherewith quietly to take them off 
again before they throw out heat ; but it is the cus- 
tom in this country, I rejoice to say, in all such cases, 
to employ the poker. We have stirred the coals in, 
and got up a rousing blaze. Sweet Mistress Ignor- 
ance, sleep on in peace ! your gates are excellently 
guarded. Friend, you see that trap ; I have a coal 
or two to throw into the fire. 

The Pope is a cuckoo, and his Grace of Canterbury 
a hedge-sparrow in whose nest there has been cucular 
intrusion. By no means hatch, England, these 
outlandish eggs. The machinations of the Pope are 
ship-worms eating into your heart of oak. These 
screw their way into the vessel of the Church wher- 
ever it is submerged in the stormy waters of debate. 
The lower timbers of that vessel are not, and must 
never on any account be, sheathed with the base cop- 
per of a human education. 

0, all ye good Christians, disagree and split among 
yourselves. 0, Churchmen, let me not ask what else 
besides a right opinion on the surplice question, 
Christian views of the wax candle difficulty, a holy 
reverence for wood as the material for altars, — what 
else but a right understanding of discussions upon 
wood and stone, and wax and calico, can be intended 
by the narrow way to Heaven ? Ask of your intellect. 
Can there be anything more narrow ? 

Excuse me, my dear fellows ; don't be frightened : 
I 've some more coals to throw down. 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 45 

There 's Baptismal Regeneration ; a coal full of 
gas, with plenty of blaze in it. How can a man pos- 
sibly be saved with wrong views about that. "We '11 
say, I go with Gorham ; anything, so long as I can 
keep the furnace going. Gorham, I say : as for 
Exeter, he is a mangrove tree, that only flourishes 
where there is mud to fix upon, in bitter, shallow 
water, and the atmosphere is of the hottest. 

More coal ! The Mussulmen are clever hands at 
keeping Ramadan, at any rate in the Sahara. Mr. 
Richardson, the traveller, writes, that in their forty 
days of fast from sunrise until sunset, they do the 
right thing with scrupulous exactitude. One of them, 
suffering from severe ophthalmia, would have no 
caustic dropped into his eye, lest, by some chance, 
the substance, sucked into the blood, should reach the 
stomach and so nourish him. That is fasting ! In 
the morning these earnest men, unable to eat, go to 
bed, and get up in the evening. A little before sun- 
set they mount to their housetops with a pocket full 
of dates and, date in hand, watch the declining sun, 
and in the same instant that the sun vanishes the date 
also disappears ; from that time festival begins. The 
fasting heroes eat and drink all night, and pop, at 
sunrise, into bed again. Whoever taught them that 
trick must have been the C. J. London of the desert. 
There is a logical judiciousness about the whole affair, 
which leaves the Ramadan observed and the flesh 
satisfied. Don't go with the Bishop of Loudon. 



46 



A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 



Toleration ! It is one of our cant words : it means 
letting the tares grow with our corn and watering 
the thistles. 

More coal : I care not where it may alight, so that 
it blazes. I stand here for the defence of Ignorance, 
and I am bound to feed the furnace of sectarian zeal. 
The Church affects to be indignant only at the inso- 
lence of Rome. Christians, for the matter of that, 
have temper enough to pity and forgive mere insolence. 
No : when I see waves running mountains high, wind 
fighting with the tattered sail, all hands on deck 
frantically pumping, shouting, scolding, — in all the 
shriek and thunder of a tempest, — it won't do to tell 
me that the sailors are beside themselves because the 
spoondrift gets into their whiskers. 

No : it is related of a certain trumpeter at Cape 
Town, that he went to sleep one day by the road-side. 
There came a lion who took him up and trotted off 
with him. The trumpeter awoke while in the lion's 
paws, perceived his danger, put his trumpet to his 
mouth and blew a terrible alarm upon the trumpet ; 
the lion dropped him instantly and scoured away. 
Rome, as a lion roaring for her prey, believed our 
Church asleep. But we can sound a trumpet. 

Shades of opinion are various ; and among men 
who think, agreement upon all points is impossible. 
Did not the Greek satirist mean mischief, when he 
said of Cerberus that "he could not only bark like a 
god but talk like a human being." In order that our 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 47 

utterance may be divine, we must instinctively repeat 
some cry, not talk like men our own opinions. 

What are you saying ? That the Church, our 
schoolmistress, must not attempt to make her children 
walk in single file, but suffer them to play about her 
freely within reasonable limits. Pretty discipline 
indeed ! Do you say that Christians must learn to 
tolerate among each other freedom of inquiry, and 
admit wide differences of opinion upon names and 
theories connected with that groundwork of religion, 
upon which we take our common stand ? Sir, this is 
the veriest cant of Toleration. It would put our 
furnace out. The very next thing would be an esta- 
blishment of schools for the imparting of our common 
knowledge — which, being truth, is part of God — to 
all the children of the poor, and leaving each child to 
receive lessons in religion from its own religious 
teacher. Let the Church perish if it must, but let it 
die as a Church Militant. There was a glorious pastor 
in the olden time, who was tormented by the weekly 
slumbers of one heavy-eyed parishioner. One day 
the provocation went beyond all endurance, and "I'll 
tell you what, my man," the pastor said, " if you 
won't hear the word of God, I '11 make you feel it ! 
so he threw the bible at his head and woke him up. 
In some sense this is what we all are bound to do ; 
if men will not attend to our expoundings of the sacred 
volume, we must use it as a military weapon ; up 
guards and at them. Rome opens her house door 



48 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

widely — bold theologian — to receive the vagabonds 
who fly before your tomahawk. I join you ; shake 
my fist and yell at Rome. But drop my tomahawk ! 
Who dares to suggest that ? Would you not wish me 
also to cut out my tongue ? Infamous Manichee, 
would it not please you to extract my teeth and feed 
me upon milk and honey ? Will Ignorance accept 
me for her knight if I prove such a dastard ? 

Dear friend, excuse me if I dance and pull my 
hair, spout verse, and am a little frantic as I con- 
template these gates. Their glow diffuses itself 
through my heart. Here we have true security. A9 
for " the good time coming," of our enemies, we can 
retort their — " wait a little longer." 

■ Credula vitam 
Spes alit, et melius eras fore semper ait." {Hear, hear.) 

'Tis the old weakness ; we could find it commented 
upon in Phrygian, if any Phrygian remained for us to 
read beyond what is now spoken by the billy-goats. 

Sir, if you wish to hear the roaring of the blaze 
made by the Papal coals, just turn your ear in this 
direction. The crackle to which you are now attend- 
ing is a mere sputter in the House of Commons. 
Listen here, ay, peep too ; see how the fire catches 
among the poor, when a hot parson comes among 
them like a fire-ship in the middle of a helpless fleet. 
From the Report published this year of a Missionary 
to the Poor in Liverpool, Mr. Bishop — a poor man's 
Bishop, who has no snug mitre for his nightcap — 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 49 

you will thank me for quoting a few golden words of 
joy. The writer himself is obviously blind to the 
beauty of his pictures, but to us, as we stand here in 
the courts of Ignorance, they wink auspiciously : for 
pictures do wink now and then. Good, sir ; I touch 
upon another controversy, and a roar from the furnace 
shouts "they never can." No, I reply, they never 
can. I back all combatants. 

" Negat quis, nego ; ait, aio : 
Postremo imperavi egomet mihi 
Omnia assentari." {Hear, hear.) 

If I could lay among you all an egg of mischief, 
I 'd be — not a butterfly, but — an Aepyornis. I 'd be 
an Aepyornis, born in Madagascar, laying and 
hatching eggs every hour. The fossil eggs of that 
bird now in Paris are sublime. One of them equals 
in bulk an entire gross of hen's eggs, or fifty thousand 
eggs of humming birds. How must we deplore that 
Milton is not writing in our days. When Satan left 
hell on his first great journey to the earth, how much 
could the sublime effect of the description have been 
heightened by the casual mention, that he took a few 
of these eggs in his pocket, hardboiled, for refresh- 
ment on the way. for such eggs of mischief. 
Yes, sir, I thank you, you suggest a fact : there is a 
nest in which such eggs are sometimes laid. Says 
Mr. Bishop : "In the course of my visits one Monday 
morning I found a worthy woman, the mother of a 
large family, bowed down with heaviness and grief ; 



50 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

* * her husband * * had been * at her again,' 
as she phrased it, c because I am not Protestant 
enough for him, though I never go to my own chapel, 
and when I go anywhere I go to church with him. 
Oh ! I dread the Sunday ; it is the worst day of the 
week to us.' She then went on to tell how her 
husband had induced her to accompany him one 
evening to hear a favourite preacher, and that the 
latter, in the course of his sermon, cautioned parents 
against employing Catholic servants, for it was neither 
safe for them nor for their children to have persons 
about them ivho might any night set the house on fire 
over their heads. ■ I was a servant myself, for years, 
Mr. Bishop,' the poor woman continued, ' and I have 
relations who are servants, and it made my blood boil 
to hear such wickedness charged upon us ; and me 
and my husband quarrelled more than a bit about it 
when we came out.' " 

Aziola. Dear Mistress Ignorance, smile in your 
sleep. Permit me in your honourable name to thank 
the preacher who can 

" Turn the instruments of good to ill, 
Moulding a credulous people to his will." — 

Reverend Aepyornis, suffer me to scratch your poll. 

Civetta. The Home Missionary says, that " in pro- 
portion to the imperfect state of men's religious cha- 
racters will their passions be aroused in attacking the 
opinions of others, or in hearing their own attacked ; 
and amongst many of the poor and ignorant the recent 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 51 

movement has evoked a bitterness of feeling and a 
strength of antipathy, which it will take a long time to 
subdue. The public papers have told of two drunken 
men who, in the course of a quarrel on the subject, 
whilst confined in one of our bridewells, tore each other 
with the ferocity of wild beasts ; they have also recorded 
* * ; and I have myself heard women as well as 
men, on both sides, venting their excited feelings in 
cursing and swearing, and have known of the matter 
being a cause of contention, even in the resorts of the 
most degraded and abandoned of the female sex. 
One morning I entered a house in a court in Jamaica- 
street, and saw a drunken man sitting over the fire, 
belching out curses against the Pope, and boasting 
of what he had heard a popular clergyman say, whom 
he described familiarly by his christian name, at a 
meeting on the previous evening ; and on another 
occasion, I saw a wild looking fellow throwing up hi3 
cap in defiance of the Pope's opponents, and vowing 
that he was ready to die for his religion." 

Dear Mistress, you may well smile in your sleep. 
The furnace at our gate burns well. The Scudamours 
of Education more than once have been repelled when 

" In the porch, that did them sore amate, 
Our flaming fire, ymixt with smouldry smoke 
And stinking sulphur, that with griesly hate 
And dreadful horror did all entrance choke, 
Enforced them their forward footing to revoke." 

Let them come on again. Dear sir, I am beside 

E 2 



52 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

myself with joy. Look here ! Look at the glorious 
condition that our zeal perpetuates. 

Pardon the repetition ; hut a good fact merits an 
encore ; as I hefore said, there are in England and 
Wales Eight Millions of us unable to read and write. 
Of all the blushing British Brides who come to sign 
the marriage register one half find it impossible to 
write down their own names. That pretty woman, 
Anne Jones, is no more able than a cat to put her 
Tom's name upon paper. Tom Jones is to her a 
signature as difficult as any, as difficult as that of the 
Cingalese gentleman named in a recent work upon 
Ceylon, — Don David Jazetileke Abeyesiriwardine 
Illangakoon Maha Moodliar. (Great Applause.) 

Ulula. Pauperism costs us 7,000,000?. a-year. 
The national grant for education is about one and 
three-quarters per cent, of that amount. If any debt 
be due to knowledge, England allows it to stand over, 
while she pays mere driblets of her interest. Twenty 
years ago, in proportion to the population, there were 
fewer blind children than there are now. Blind in 
their minds I mean, through total absence of in- 
struction. 

Glaux. Twenty years ago ! Ah ! dear ; it makes 
us scratch our grey heads when we hear our own time 
dealt with so in masses. Twenty years rolled into a 
pill, and dropped so carelessly, reminds us in an ag- 
gravating manner of the speed with which the libation 
of a lifetime rushes out of us, and leaves our bodies 



IGNORANCE OF TEE POOR. 53 

empty cups, thrown each into its dust-hole. For 
pity's sake, let us unravel this ball of time. Go 
back, too, somewhat farther — be historical, and touch 
years tenderly, as if we loved them. I bring facts. 

The first impulse to public education was given 
abroad by Pestalozzi ; but we will not touch him ; he 
is poisonous, as foreigners all are, except the men 
of Turkey, Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Southern 
Italy, who agree with England in acknowledging 
the rule of Ignorance. In other countries, only two 
men in a hundred have escaped the Education-pox. 
If we go too much among them we shall catch it. 
The very air in Germany smells like a school-room. 
In Germany they say a school-room does not smell ; 
but we know better. Of one of our school-rooms, 
Mr. Lingen says, "I never shall forget the hot, 
sickening smell, which struck me on opening the door 
of that low, dark room, in which thirty girls and 
twenty boys were huddled together. It more nearly 
resembled the smell of the engine on board a steamer, 
such as is felt by a sea-sick voyager on passing near 
the funnel." 

Buho. I dare say. What right had so many 
parents to send children to be taught ? — were there 
no gutters in the district ? 

Screech. The faces of foreign children have been 
ignominiously washed, and the streets swarm with 
them at five minutes to nine as they are all pattering 
to school, where they suffer vile imprisonment day 



54 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

after day, while our free British boys are early trained 
to independence. Many of them even earn their living 
at a time when foreign boys are at their A, B, C. 

Glaux. In 1798 there rose up Joseph Lancaster, 
a quaker, whom the spirit moved to meddle with the 
children of this country. He advocated, by precept and 
example, a new system of education for the poor, by 
monitors and by a master apt to teach, with quaint 
ways of correcting error. 

Buho. What was this man's religion? 

Glaux. He was a mere Quaker. He said I cannot 
teach your creed, or any creed ; but I will take boys to 
whom you yourselves have never taught it — I will edu- 
cate them ; they shall read and write, and cipher ; they 
shall be made teachable and good ; they shall know 
all their Christian duty ; and then the churches are 
all yours, your ministers shall teach their doctrines. 
At this good men felt naturally angry, for the poor 
were taken from their hands, and taught, as if the 
world contained no catechism — as if there were no 
Act of Uniformity — no Book of Common Prayer to be 
read. What right had any one to teach the people 
reading, writing, and arithmetic ? 

Aziola. There are not wanting malignant men who 
will endeavour to remove all sting from your re- 
proaches by declaring, that you mean the contrary to 
what you say. 

Glaux. A sweeping method of reply to an antago- 
nist ; but I will leave no room even for this mean sub- 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 55 

terfuge. The man, Lancaster, shall be put down by 
other lips than mine. Not my cry, but the cry of his 
own time, in the words of an earnest contemporary, shall 
be lifted up against him. I trust there is no need to 
allude to the respectability of Mrs. Trimmer (in Lan- 
caster's time), authoress of profitable children's books. 
She was the mouthpiece of a large religious party. 
She wrote against Lancaster, so let her speak. I 
glory to confess, that I quote her words from the 
pages of a scoffer (Sydney Smith), who did not 
hesitate to stain his intellect with satire. He has 
maltreated Mrs. Trimmer ; but as he has quoted 
some of her most pregnant passages, and as I have 
not Trimmer's works at home, I am obliged to filch 
these isolated gems out of a tawdry setting. Mrs. 
Trimmer, in her book, demolished Lancaster in detail, 
slaughtering an inch of him, it seems, in every 
paragraph. "When I meet," says Mr. Lancaster, 
" with a slovenly boy, I put a label upon his breast 
— I walk him round the school with a tin or a paper 
crown upon his head." " Surely," says Mrs. Trim- 
mer, as she digs her poker down into the fire of zeal, 
" surely it should be remembered that the Saviour of 
the World was crowned with thorns in derision, and 
that this is a reason why crowning is an improper 
punishment for a slovenly boy." When a boy has 
been continuously well-behaved, he gets from Mr. 
Lancaster a badge of merit. Mrs. Trimmer, who 
believes the State to be as much in danger as the 



56 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Church — and therein I agree with her — remarks, 
that " Boys, accustomed to consider themselves the 
nobles of the school, may, in their future lives, from 
a conceit of their own merits (unless they have very 
sound principles), aspire to be nobles of the land, 
and to take place of the hereditary nobility." 

The danger to the country wore a more alarming 
aspect when, in 1805, the educational plans of Lan- 
caster became matured into an organised conspiracy. 
The British and Foreign School Society was formed 
for educating all parties alike ; for teaching the 
Churchman and the Methodist to read on the same 
principles. The only merit of this society was, that 
it excluded the Roman Catholics, the Unitarians, and 
Jews, who, it was thought, would be more likely 
to emerge from error, by being consigned to 
Ignorance. 

Friends of the constitution found it necessary then 
to sound a louder tocsin, and sent over to India for 
their bell. From Madras came Dr. Bell, who was 
immediately set up as the educational reformer. 
The National School Society was established, in 1811, 
as an opposition to the latitudinarian establishment. 
The children who attended these schools were to 
learn the catechism, attend the parish church, and 
use only such books as were approved by the Society 
for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. 

Aziola. Now, here, the Church was mean ; she said, 
I do not like your principle ; my doctrines are essential, 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 57 

and I do not like to see a school in which they are 
left out. But go on ; I cannot hinder you, except 
by seeking to excel your plan and winning children 
to myself. I also, therefore, will establish schools, 
and teach not only reading and writing, but that 
which I hold to be religion also. Quite right, says 
the Knowledge-monger, so we get two schools instead 
of one. You have omitted to state, Glaux, that Bell 
discovered and advocated in a pamphlet, the system 
of instruction by means of monitors, the Madras 
system it was then called. Lancaster read the 
pamphlet and misapplied the idea to the education 
of a people. 

Glaux. Oberlin, another nasty foreigner, in 1780, 
had established the germ of infant schools in the Ban 
de la Roche. In 1815 the busybodies who set up 
to mend the world, began to introduce them into 
England. Here, again, the schools were imported 
in a crude state, just as they were found, no religious 
doctrine was provided for the infants. Not long 
afterwards were founded the Church Infant Schools. 
When the Church entered thus into the race, it is 
no wonder that Lord Brougham was tempted. His 
opportunity, he thought, was come, and in the year 
1820 he introduced a National Education Bill. 

Civetta. Our lady, Ignorance, who had been 
twitching for some time, then started from her sleep. 
Look to the fire at the front gate ! she cried. 

Glaux. We looked to it. The dissenters abused 



58 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Lord Brougham's Bill for being respectful to the 
Church ; the Church exclaimed against respect for the 
dissenters. The fire burned cheerily, and my Lord 
Brougham burnt his fingers when he thought to get 
the gate open. 

Civetta. Lord Brougham went off and soon after- 
wards climbed up my lady's wall, where he sat perched 
with a Poetry Boy, throwing stones at her front door, 
Ignorance of the Middle Classes. University College 
is the name of a big stone that lies now upon her 
door step. Those fellows, in 1827, threw it. I 
deplore to add that a parcel of bishops climbed the 
wall when he got down, and threw a bigger stone, 
King's College, a regular boulder. 

I don't trust the Church. The very poker with 
which she occasionally stirs that fire, may strike us 
on the head some of these days. As for her poker, 
she is a large person, and her thrusts are in proportion 
vigorous ; but I should fail of a duty if I omitted to 
return thanks to our sectarian friends of all denomi- 
nations; because each denomination seems to me to 
keep a poker of a size proportioned to its strength, 
and some aspire beyond that limitation, as some auts 
will labour with too large a straw. 

Glaux. In 1831, Lord Stanley, as secretary for 
Ireland, established in Dublin a National Board of 
Education for Catholics and Protestants. The Irish 
Education Act might have done damage to our cause 
by this time, but 1 never feared. It has been almost 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 59 

a dead letter for want of funds. As the Fiend says 
in the play, " Ha ! ha ! " 

In 1835 some evil-disposed persons, who were 
often glancing at our windows, organised a gang. 
They called themselves "the Central Society of Edu- 
cation," and conducted a plot against your mistress. 
Pamphlets and handbills passed about, outside her 
walls, speeches were made, the press, a horrid cata- 
pult, fired all manner of articles against her, and the 
government of England said at last that something 
should be done. But what ? The Fiend, who re- 
appears from behind a bush, shouts unexpectedly 
again: " Ha ! ha! " 

Screech. In 1839 it was said that something should 
be done. In 1851, however, nothing has been done. 
It was determined in 1839 to appoint an Educational 
Board, but what manner of Board to get no mortal 
could tell. Rector Sleek could not be asked to work 
with the Hon. Mr. Prim, or with the Rev. Zachariah 
Howler. It was not possible to represent all parties 
on the Board, unless the Tamer of the Happy 
Family were asked to act as president, and it was 
not desirable or fit that any party should be left 
unrepresented. 

Glaux. So it was resolved to turn out from the 
Cabinet itself a real five-in-hand committee, the tits 
being chosen from the Privy Council. The Com- 
mittee of Privy Council for Education being thus 
established — 



60 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Civetta. And its members having other matters 
beside Education to attend to — 

Glaux. A trustworthy secretary was immediately 
looked for, and the reins committed to the hands 
of Dr. Kay, now Sir Kay Shuttleworth. Dr. Kay 
had caught an education fever from the Continent. 
He said that to schools teachers were necessary, 
and that these teachers to be fit for duty required 
training. 

ScREEcn. Quite, you perceive, a coachman's 
notion. 

Glaux. Teachers abroad are treated like our horses, 
and sent off to training establishments, where they 
undergo a three years' preparation, before they are 
warranted as safe in harness. In Saxony, with a popu- 
lation nearly as large as that of London, there are nine 
such training schools, or normal schools as they are 
called, in Prussia forty or fifty. So at the sug- 
gestion of Dr. Kay the English government proposed 
a Bill for the establishment of one. It proposed 
to found a college for perfecting the education of 
young teachers, and for their instruction iu the 
science and the practice of imparting knowledge, 
without reference to their religious opinions. 

Civetta. That is to say, without reference to any 
of the upraised pokers which immediately demolished 
that unhappy Bill. 

Glaux. The two educational societies, the British 
and Foreign, and the National, having made away 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 61 

with the foundling, divided between themselves ten 
thousand pounds, which had been exposed with it in 
its little pocket. 

Dr. Kay and Mr. Tuffnel, with the desperation of 
two hardened burglars, who were bent upon their 
purpose against your dear lady's establishment, these 
two men, Kay and Tuffnell, established a training 
college at their own expense. The Battersea Normal 
School that was, and Bible training, without Bible 
interpretation, formed part of its system. Good men 
shook their heads at it, and passed by on the other 
side. So Kay and Tufnell, to avoid suspicion, made 
over their college to the National School Society, by 
whom it was put out to nurse upon the bosom of 
the Church. 

The Committee of Council for Education seeing 
how the wind blew, set its sail accordingly. It has 
a little money to dispose of annually. Up pops the 
Fiend: " Ha ! ha!" Well, we are thankful that 
it is so little. This money it gives "to him who 
hath " in aid of what he hath, if people ask they 
shall receive. The blackamoor spots it is of no use 
to attack with whitewash. Places too poor to raise 
an education fund, too ignorant to know how much 
they want a school, lie so much under the feet of 
privy councillors that they are of course concealed 
from view. The school that asks for aid must teach 
the Bible and expound it, any how, only it must 
be expounded. Inspection shall take place, says 



62 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

government ; but, never mind, you shall not be looked 
after very sharply. You shall look after yourselves. 
The cash bestowed by this committee does not fret 
us very much, go where it may. 

Ulula. It is not quite twice the income of Christ's 
Hospital. 

Glatjx. Our gates had proved themselves impreg- 
nable. The Lancashire Public School Association was 
established in 1847 by Manchester cracksmen, to 
establish on their own account the un-English principle 
of local school management and non-interference with 
religious feeling. In April, 1850, Fox's Bill threatens 
us with the German dodge of educating all and 
leaving ratepayers to settle in each district their own 
religious differences, and adjust their schools accord- 
ingly. 

BtTHO. Education may do for your foreigners ; your 
frog-eaters who get 2,000,000?. a-year granted (and 
need it) to make them rational. Britons are born 
rational. I scarcely deigned a glance at Fox's Bill. 

Glaux. Well, sir, the defeat and discomfiture of this 
Fox, that I confess I thought not worth the following, 
caused a meeting of sly foxes at Manchester in the 
October of last year. The " Lancashire " was turned 
into the "National" Public School Association. 
The vermin swore upon their tails that they would 
force these gates for us, and open them for ever to 
the people. 

Screech. Meanwhile our gates remain impregnable. 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 63 

Glaux. As for the children who are really taught, 
large numbers of them have a dame, licensed by us, for 
teacher. Go where they may, nearly all children taught, 
go to their school for a short time only, from the age of 
six until the age of nine or ten. Says the inspector 
of the Midland district, the Rev. H. Moseley, " The 
general impression amongst those persons who are 
likely to be best informed on the subject, is, that the 
average age of the children who attend our elementary 
schools is steadily sinking. We may be educating 
more, but, they are, I believe, younger children, and 
stay with us a less time." 

Ulula. Good. We are a practical people, and just 
as the members of our middle class remove their 
children from a state of pupillage as soon as they are 
tall enough to climb an office stool or show their heads 
and shoulders over a counter ; so the children of the 
people are reclaimed from school so soon as they have 
strength and lungs enough to scare away a crow. 

Civetta. We have now, I think, four normal schools 
(not forty) ill supplied with funds ; these polish off a 
pupil in about six months, and do not take three years 
about it like those dummy Germans. Brisk is the 
word in Britain. Say that a teacher cannot get his 
wheels greased properly within so short a time. The 
fact is that we know that they ought not to be greased 
at all. As the people of Valparaiso say of their great 
bullock waggons, only fools would hinder them from 
creaking. The cattle are all so accustomed to it, 



64 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

that they will not pull unless the waggon makes a 
noise ; and then, too, if jou stop the creaking what 
is there to arouse the toll- keeper and squeak, " Wake 
up, my man, a vehicle is coming." 

Are numbers of our countrymen left in such deep 
debasement as to be mere hogs ? What do you 
mean by a mere hog, I say ? There are parts of the 
world, as Minorca for example, or as Murray, 
between Spey and Elgin, where hogs have been 
found to speed the plough, as well as nobler animals. 
If so, why may not Great Britain, in her agricultural 
counties, act upon that experience, as she indeed 
now is doing ? 

Ulula. Education can breed only discontent by 
taking a man out of himself. A man's house — I 
would interpret that, his flesh — should be his castle. 
Happy the man who has no need to scamper up and 
down the world in spirit, and to fetch his pleasure 
from abroad. 

" Follow (for be is easy paced) the snail ; 
Be thine own palace, or the world 's thy jail." 

Aziola. It had been raining yesterday when I 
walked out and, in a very filthy lane, I saw a Briton who 
had locked himself up fast in his palace. He was a 
haggard man, with grey hair, who lay at length upon 
the muddy footpath, stretching his arms about the 
soil as if designing an affectionate caress for mother 
earth whose clod he was. His face was so much 
buried in a filthy puddle, that I wondered how he 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 65 

could get out of his mouth the accents not of human 
speech but of an occasional " Broo — ha! — ha!" 
His mate stood over him cursing, as she prepared to 
pick him up. 

0, fire of pious zeal ! flame on ; and, for the love 
of God, oh ! Christians, let it be well stirred ! These 
gates, my dear sir, are impregnable. Let us look 
to the next topic. Your Manchester cracksmen 
are 

Bcho. Of course they are. But did they not commit 
a burglary, and murder too, upon Ignorance's niece, 
down in the country — rob poor dear Protection of her 
property, and beat her on the head ? 

Ulula.. Nonsense ; that was quite another thing ; 
and they could not have done that without aid from 
the London gang. But as for any harm with which 
they are now threatening us, you ought to be ashamed 
of yourself if you let that concern you. Grant all 
the tools they ask for, and they cannot burst those 
gates. Put out the fire, and the gates hold. What 
do these people ask ? To take education from the 
hands of a sectarian, or of a religious man, and stick 
it like a bouquet in the bosom of a parish beadle. 
Grant them this — what do I care ? "While the poor, 
hedged in by the divinity of Ignorance, seek not 
strange gods, and do not heed the school ; while 
richer men refuse to tax themselves, what harm can 
come to us ? When Britannia shall begin to poke us 
up with her long spear, and play the despot, telling 



&Q A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

us that every child up to a certain point must and 
shall he taught, as well as fed ; when it is left to 
the option of ratepayers not whether they will teach 
at all, hut whether they will teach more than the 
lawful minimum — 

Boho. Compulsion, sir. I have a pamphlet in my 
pocket — with ten lines of it I'll knock you down. 
An article reprinted from a Review, which all parties 
acknowledge to be most respectable. 

Ulula. Sir, for my own part, I hope never to see 
the day 

Buho. No, sir ; I hope not, sir. Here, sir, — here I 
have it. I have pencilled a few passages. There 's 
Fox's Bill, sir ; that contained "Invasions enough to 
make the Hair of any true Friend of Freedom stand 
On End." Mine has been cut lately, or you 'd see it 
standing. Secular Education, sir ! hear this : 
11 Will they allow the living system of God's truth to 
be cut asunder, as \vith the Executioner's Sword, and 
one Bleeding Half given to the Schoolmaster, and the 
other to the Minister ? " Fine, I believe you, sir ! 

Aziola. I, too, have read the pamphlet, Buho ; 
much of it is devoted to Mr. Bichson's Manchester 
Municipal Scheme, already defunct. That emanated 
from a clergyman who wished to combine tolerant 
religious education with the Lancashire idea ; — 
" Authorised Version of the Scriptures," stood in his 
prospectus. The Catholics, excluded, scouted it. 
The Sectarians, included, scorned it. Salmon with- 



IGNORANCE OF THE POOR. 67 

out sauce ! Salmon, says A, must be eaten with 
cayenne and vinegar ; says B, no, I want plain 
butter ; says C, I will not have it without orthodox 
fish-sauce ; there is one kind of fish-sauce only, and 
you know what that is ; D has an eccentric appetite 
for salmon and garlic, while E cries for flaming 
brimstone on his fish. Then a wretch comes insult- 
ing A, B, C, D, B, monstrously violating civil and 
religious liberty, with plates of the mere insipid salmon, 
saying, All sauces are upon the table, gentlemen, 
and let each help himself. What if I like my sauce 
without the fish, why is fish thrust upon me ? 

Ulula. Well said, Aziola. You are quite one 
of us. 

Buho (still studying the Pamphlet). I say, 
what 's an " Establishmentarian ? " I 've heard of 
Hungarians and Unitarians ; — who are the Establish- 
mentarians ? 

Aziola. I don't know, Buho. Perhaps the word 
is an abbreviation, and if we had the rest of it, I could 
tell what it meant. 

Ulula. Well, gentlemen, we may dismiss this 
theme with satisfaction. Ignorance of the poor is 
safe for many years. The next topic 

Screech. Is Mrs. Ulula receiving company ? 

Ulula. Five double knocks in twenty minutes 
make one think so, and I certainly have heard silks 
rustling by the door. I told my wife that we might 
probably sit late, and that we would have coffee in 

f 2 



68 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

the dining-room ; possibly she has asked some neigh- 
bours to take tea with herself and the other woman- 
kind. Gentlemen, our next topic, I suppose, will be 

Ignorance at tfje 8imbergttte0. 

Of these, one will especially present itself as an 
agreeable subject of conversation. 

Civetta. Yes. It shall stand upon a pedestal in 
our imaginations. First, the works of Saint Surdus, 
then the folios of Father Ingannato, then the holy 
Bishop Tiburon of Gatada, with the Life of Saint 
Larronius, we pile them one upon the other, and then 
plant the genius of Oxford on the top. 

The name of University is given to the Oxford and 
Cambridge educational establishments, on account of 
their deficiency in Universal Knowledge. Of the whole 
sphere of study they turn one side only, and always, 
to the gaze of man, just as the moon does with her 
sphere, — or as La Merluche was ordered to do with his 
breeches, when he pleaded to the miser inability to 
wait at table : — 

" La Merluche. — Monsieur, vous savez bien, que 
j 'ai mon haut-de-chausses tout troue par derriere, et 
qu'on me voit, reverence parler 

" Harpagon. — Paix ! Rangez cela adroitement du 
cote de la muraille, et pre'sentez toujours le devant 
au monde." 

So our universities display a sound part when they 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 69 

can, and hold their raggedness du cote de la muraille. 
Walls unluckily have eyes as well as ears ; for, 
being of course wall-eyed, they are not stone blind. 
It has become known, therefore, that the Univer- 
sities not only do not show, but do not wear, an 
entire suit of education. Cambridge has been lately 
to the tailors, and exults in the notion of appearing 
more respectable by virtue of a patch ; but the truth 
is, that, if education be their object, as I hope it is 
not, new clothes are required for each establishment. 

The Universities are set up as opponents to our 
Mistress ; they are called the Seats of Learning ; 
ragged seats, I say. They are Nurseries of Arts. 
Well, sir, when I have married Mistress Ignorance, 
they are the nurseries in which I hope to keep my 
children. Oxford shall be the matron for us. All 
nurses are ignorant as well as prejudiced, and she is 
Head Nurse to the British Nation. 

Screech. I wonder what would really be the 
character of any great establishment which had no 
other object than to foster learning ? 

Ulula. What do you say, Aziola ? 

Aziola. It would strive to represent, by numerous 
and active teachers, every branch upon the tree of 
knowledge ; and, no doubt, the labour annually spent 
on each department of its teaching would be carefully 
apportioned, and made more or less, according to its 
relative importance. There would be formed a grand 
picture, true in its perspective and harmoniously 



70 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

coloured, of the intelligence to which man has at- 
tained ; and this would realise the knowledge-monger's 
notion of an University. 

But since it is impossible that any single intellect 
should grasp so wide a range of information, we may 
fancy children trained at school to contemplate the 
fields of human knowledge in their due relative pro- 
portions, and as youth, obliged to recognise all out- 
lying boundaries, while they devote especial care to 
the elaboration of whatever study may best suit their 
prospects or their tastes. Thus each might cultivate 
his pet plant like a labourer who knows the garden, 
not like a caterpillar, learned in his leaf and ignorant 
of all beside. His special object also will be best 
attained when he is most awake to all surrounding 
circumstances. If you reach after that pear, without 
considering what stands against your elbows, you may 
empty a decanter over me. He who desires thoroughly 
to know one subject should be possessed of so much 
intellectual geography as will enable him to see its 
true position in the Universe of thought. 

Civetta. When you spoke of my upsetting a de- 
canter, I was reminded of a story, which I mean to tell 
you now. A gentleman who carved a goose was in- 
expert ; and thinking only of the stubborn joints that 
would not be unhinged, he totally forgot the gravy. 
Presently the goose slipped off the dish and escaped 
into his neighbour's lap. Now to have thrown a hot 
goose on a lady's lap would disconcert most people, but 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 71 

the gentleman in question was not disconcerted ; turn- 
ing round with a bland smile he said : " I '11 trouble you 
for that goose." Here we have a sublime example of 
the man with one idea. This gentleman's idea was 
the goose, and in the absorbing interest attached to 
his undertaking, that he was to carve that goose, not 
altogether knowing how, he had shut out extraneous 
objects. Suddenly the goose was gone, but his eyes 
followed it, his mind was wrapt up in his struggle 
with it ; what did he know of that lady ? — I '11 
trouble you for That Goose, expressed the perfect 
abstraction of a mind bent on developing its one 
idea. No doubt he had gone through a course of 
Oxford training. 

Aziola. Hearne had, at any rate — Hearne, the 
antiquary. His one idea was antiquities ; and there 
is one of his prayers preserved in the Bodleian 
library which runs as follows ; only mark, you are 
bold men if you laugh at it ; I dare not. It is 
loveable and true-hearted enough, though it does 
bluntly what we all do more or less ; especially 
you Oxford men. " most gracious and merciful 
Lord God, wonderful in Thy providence, I return 
all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou hast 
always taken of me. I continually meet with 
most signal instances of this Thy providence ; and 
one act yesterday, when I unexpectedly met with 
three old MSS., for which, in a particular manner, I 
return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue the 



72 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

same protection to me, a poor helpless sinner, and 
that for Jesus Christ, his sake." 

At the University of Oxford, as is well known, no- 
thing is taught but theology and antiquities. Of 
theology only a part, and of antiquities only the 
languages of Greece and Rome, with so much Greek 
and Roman history as illustrates the authors studied. 
Whatever knowledge is required of mathematics is 
less than every school-boy carries home with him, 
who has been reasonably taught. Whatever lectures 
are delivered upon sciences are few in number, and 
are the rags confided almost literally to dead walls. 
The disciple of Oxford, who has taken the highest 
honours of the university, unless he should get him- 
self corrupted with knowledge, from some other 
source, might be the warden of your House of Igno- 
rance, and keep you all in safety. He is useless upon 
earth, would be mere ballast in a balloon, and one 
too many in a diving-bell. He becomes, according to 
his opportunities, perhaps, a legislator, and his train- 
ing has unfitted him for grappling with great public 
questions. He applauds his brother who quotes 
Virgil in a speech, and can say, " Hear, hear," like 
a gentleman. Or he becomes a scholar, reads much 
Greek and Latin, and abstains from operating on his 
fellow creatures, as a surgeon conscious of his inability 
to use the knife. Or he becomes a — ; well, I don't 
know anything else that he is fit to be. He becomes 
a clergyman, for which office his training has not 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 73 

been the best. Or he becomes a school-master, and 
teaches others to nurse one idea. Or, having wealth 
sufficient, he subsides into a country gentleman, for 
which he is extremely fit. Thanks to free vigorous 
association of young men with one another, the mass 
of youthful generosity and frolic there fermenting in 
one common heap, makes of a great University an 
educating place quite independent of its tutors. 

Civetta. Good wine, though not without some lees, 
comes of that fermentation. So, when the Alma Mater 
sets herself up as a wise instructress, or a leader in the 
cause of education, I snap my fingers at her im- 
pudence. Ignorance at the universities is quite as 
dense as it is here. But when I see a man who has been 
educated at one of our great universities, perhaps has 
a fellowship, and who knows nothing more than he 
has learned at college, I, an Ignoramus, hold my 
hand to him, and say, ''Hail, Fellow! well met." 
He is a man whom it is pleasant to take wine with. 
I like to meet him at a dinner table, when he does 
not feel it necessary to look wise — that is to say, 
after the departure of the ladies ; for, within the 
sphere of their radiance, I often find that an in- 
tolerable odour from his neckcloth makes him dis- 
agreeable. He emits this only to propitiate the 
female sex. 

Uhu. The reformers go to a great university, point 
out her rags, and say, Why don't you mend? 

Aziola. The university replies, This is an old 



74 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

dress which has descended to me ; it was very hand- 
some when new, and it would be cruel to my grand- 
mother to mend it, or to wear another. 

Uhu. Those fellows go to the colleges and say, 
Why don't you revise your statutes ? 

Aziola. The colleges fold their hands, turn up 
their eyes, and reply, We owe a pious duty to our 
founders. Why do you take so much pains with a mere 
parsley bed ? they ask some college ; and it answers 
meekly, Gentlemen, my founder left it me in charge. 
Why then did you not take care also of your founder's 
cow ? Who has cut down his orchard ? Gentlemen, 
the cow was obviously sick ; the apple-trees were old. 
Then, why not root up also this rank parsley ? 

What do I mean by the cow ? You shall see pre- 
sently. Uhu pulls out his notes, and means to be 
historical. 

Uhu. W T hy flinch ? I will be brief as Tacitus, yet 
gossip like Herodotus — like Thucydides, I will — 

Civetta. Yes, yes, like a good fellow — go on. 

Uhu. Rouse, the antiquary, says, that Oxford Uni- 
versity was founded in the year of the world, 2855, by 
a Brute ; but Brute, or Brutus, not having existed, this 
story concerning him is to be received with caution. 
In the reign of King Alfred, " whose memory to 
every judicious taste shall be always sweeter than 
honey," Oxford was a place of study and of theolo- 
gical dissension. " St. Grymbald. an eloquent and 
most excellent interpreter of the Holy Scriptures," 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 75 

appears to have been the Dr. Pusey of his day; and, 
after three years of " sharp contention," King Alfred 
was invited to decide the knotty points. " Pooh ! 
pooh ! " said Alfred; " kiss and be friends." Thereat 
Grymbald was exceeding wroth, and went away to 
Winchester. 

Before any colleges were founded, there was the 
university, and there were halls and houses — wooden 
buildings, thatched with straw. There were students 
lodged about the town ; there was the town with 
narrow streets intolerably filthy, and a frequent pes- 
tilence ; there was political commotion out of doors, 
and often a besieging army round the walls. The 
learning was of that narrow kind which characterised 
what are called the middle ages. Colleges began to 
be founded in the thirteenth century, when, in ad- 
dition to town and gown disputes, there was a violent 
feud within the university between those students 
who were born north of the river Trent, and those 
born to the south of it. In the reign of Edward II, 
the university waged war against the preaching friars, 
besides other quarrelling ; in the reign of Edward 
III, the university was full of bitter controversies 
upon religious doctrine. For many years, violent 
dissensions continued between the northern and 
southern men. In 1354, on St. Scholastica's day — 

Screech. Who is Scholastica — the saint of school- 
masters ? 

Civetta. No ; she 's a lady whom it is impossible to 



76 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

pass without telling a story. You know Saint Benedict 
of course ? how, being a very good boy, he ran away 
from school, because he wanted to be a hermit ; how 
he gave his nurse the slip, and did indeed become a 
very holy man, and head of an important monkery. 
Scholastica was sister to St. Benedict, who followed 
his good ways, and came to live in the desert near 
him, head of a nunnery. One afternoon, St. Benedict 
called on his sister, St. Scholastica, and after chat- 
ting, when he arose to go, was pressed to stop and 
take tea. " No, indeed, I cannot, sister ; I promised 
to be home at six, and I 've an appointment." " Do, 
dear Ben., stop ; give me the pleasure of your com- 
pany only for an hour or two." But Benedict was in 
a hurry to be off. His sister, therefore, folding her 
hands, looked up to Heaven, and prayed that her 
brother might be compelled to stop to tea. Imme- 
diately there arose a great storm, and sheets of rain 
descended. How could the saint go home without an 
umbrella ? So Benedict submitted to his fate, and 
pocketed his gloves, poor fellow. 

Uhu. On St. Scholastica's day, in 1354, there be- 
gan to descend blows like rain upon the heads of town 
and gown, in a great battle which lasted three days. 
To this date, I believe the Mayor of Oxford and some 
score or two of citizens hear the Litany at St. Mary's 
Church, and pay a penny each upon the fatal anniver- 
sary. In the reign of Richard II, there were ferocious 
conflicts between north and south men. 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 77 

Ulula. My dear sir, you are giving us a history 
like Alison's — all fight — for which we did not bargain. 

Civetta. So you may try to extricate another thread . 
By-the-bye, perhaps you know the old couplet ? 

" Chronica si penses, cum pugnant Oxonienses, 
Post paucos menses, volat ira per Angligenenses." 

Do you observe how thoroughly that is verified now 
in our own day, anent the Prayer Book controversy 
and the Pope. 

Uhtj. Well, sir, our knot must be unravelled ; what 
thread next shall tempt our fingers to a pick. Let 
us take up the college plea of duty to the founders. 
There is reason in it. The Fellows of a college 
swear to keep the statutes of the founder inviolate, 
in their plain grammatical meaning. So of course 
they do. There is All Souls', for example, telling 
in its very name why it was founded. In this Col- 
legium Omnium Animarum Fidelium Defunctorum, 
the fellows oblige themselves by oath to offer up 
prayers for the souls of King Henry VI. and Arch- 
bishop Chichele, for the souls of all subjects who had 
fallen in our famous war with France, and for the 
souls of all the faithful. It i3 well known that our 
noblemen-fellows of All Souls' are perpetually as- 
sisting at masses for this purpose in dutiful perform- 
ance of their vow. Richard Fox, founder of Corpus 
Christi, only fell so far short of founding a monastic 
institution as to save his college from becoming 
involved in the monastic ruins. Some of the 



78 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

colleges were founded for the express purpose of 
promoting popery, and bad their statutes framed 
accordingly. 

Ulula. Perhaps it is in obedience to these statutes 
that many of our Oxford men have conscientiously 
embraced the faith of Rome. 

Uhu. All Souls' was founded for poor scholars. 

Ciyetta. Which of course the noblemen who hold its 
fellowships, all are, although not in the sense intended 
by the founder. 

Uhu. They have all passed an examination in 
psalmody before they were elected. Magdalene, 
founded for the poor, has a revenue of 30,000?. 
a-year ; of course that is all spent in the encouragement 
of low-born genius. Fellowship never goes by favour 
to the rich, not even being earned by them, it is the 
heritage of poor men who devote themselves to in- 
tellectual toil. It is well known, also, that the 
fellows keep up their knowledge by daily scholastic 
exercises, to which they have pledged themselves, 
and pass examinations to attest their increase of 
proficiency. It would be ridiculous to suppose that, 
after becoming Bachelor of Arts through a weak 
school-boy's pass examination ; the high titles of 
Master of Arts, Bachelor of Divinity, or Doctor, are 
not the reward of higher toil, obtained by the eu- 
durance of severer tests. It would be an insult to 
the university to think that she can say to her young 
fellows, wait a little while and pay me certain monies ; 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 79 

for my letters M.A., B.D., D.D., D.C.L., <fcc, can 
be all produced out of your L. S. D. 

Aziola. Well, Sir, just then we were upon the 
traces of the cow ; we shall soon get into the orchard 
without fruit-trees. 

Uhu. The founders took a lad and made him scholar 
or fellow of a college, by giving him a subsistence in 
return for an obligation on his part, diligently to 
spend his life in a prescribed course of studies, 
prayers and masses, showing his proficiency by 
gradual ascent in his examinations ; by graduating, 
as they call it now. The allowance for a scholar at 
Merton College, in 1274, was 50s. per annum ; in 
1535, it averaged 4:1. 6s. Sd. The fellowship then 
was a subsistence earned by monastic devotion to a 
life of study. 

Civetta. What is it now, — at Oxford ? It is 
more than a subsistence in the present day, and the 
more able therefore to minister to a student's wants. 
Is it a mighty incentive to literary toil, a prize of 
knowledge ? . . . Pardon, I meant to slap you 
on the back triumphantly ; I did not mean to knock 
you off your seat. It is an inducement to be ignorant. 
It is one of a large family of institutions which are 
Britannia's own gingerbread ; she keeps abundance 
in her cupboard, and I half suspect her shield is 
made of it : it is one, sir, of the British sinecures. 

Uhu. In more than half the colleges it is obtained 
by a young man before he is nineteen ; or he obtains, 



80 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

if not a fellowship a scholarship, which leads im- 
mediately into it, as Portman-street leads into 
Portman-square. Before he becomes able to work 
like a man, all stimulus to work is over. Or in some 
colleges he must be chosen from the natives of a 
certain district, or the descendants of a certain family. 
At All Souls' the fellowships are open ; but, because 
the founder meant them for poor scholars, it is thought 
more fit, as Civetta has suggested, to confine them to 
the aristocracy. Oriel and Balliol are the only colleges 
with really open fellowships ; and the fellows of 
Oriel accordingly stand higher than the fellows of 
All Souls' in intellectual, if not in verbal, rank. 

Aziola. Here is a loss of fruit-trees ; all the more 
apparent when you remember that the teaching by 
professors is but nominal ; and that the education, as it 
is called, of youth at Oxford, is in the hand of tutors 
who must be selected from so many of these fellows, 
in each college, as may think it worth while to reside, 
— some eight or ten, upon an average. 

I say nothing, my dear sir, of the expense of 
what Oxonians call an education, as a contrast to the 
large funds held by colleges, that they may educate 
gratuitously. There I have nobody to quarrel with. 

Civetta. Well, I believe that nobody desires to change 
the social class of students ; we may safely, therefore, 
speak as our hearts dictate, and suggest that so much 
supervision and economy might be allowed, as would 
protect from ruin any humble clergyman who trusted 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 81 

Alma Mater with the training of his son. Bankrupt 
boys and crippled fathers we may pity without putting 
Ignorance in danger. " 'Tis folly to be wise," but 
it is worse than folly to be cruel. 

Ulula. About Cambridge I feel more uneasy. 
That university has yielded too readily. I do not 
like its extended examinations. King's College, 
Cambridge, only last May-day, abandoned of its own 
accord a right to constitute its men B.A, with- 
out examination. Then, too, its fellowships have 
been more fairly the rewards of merit ; and its great 
idea, mathematics, does unfortunately train men to 
advance the pride of knowledge in the present day. 
The expert mathematician goes into the world pre- 
pared to follow any rash adventurer into the unknown 
lands of science. He has the key to unlock many 
things which man is only too desirous to be fingering. 
Adams was not an Oxford man. I don't like this. 
I am piqued at Cambridge, and I will not suffer 
her to suckle one of mine. 

Ciyetta. Oxford 's the nurse for me. I scold her for 
pretending to be wise, I am ashamed of her because 
she is not candid, I rebuke her, but she is my dear 
old nurse. Bless her soul, she didn't fail to send a 
petition to the Queen against the meddling of those 
rascally commissioners, from Heads of Houses. 

Aziola. Happy houses, that have got so little in 
their Heads ! 

Buho. I '11 write a line to F. M. the Duke of 



82 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Wellington, and beg to be informed why he, as 
Chancellor, refused to present that petition, confound 
his impudence ! 

Civetta. One of the most original geniuses of the 
day is William Sewell, B.D. (of Oxford), his move in 
opposition to the Universities' Commission, is one of 
the most dexterous of his achievements. I call it his 
move, but he is supposed to have contributed to the 
manifesto — for it is a manifesto — only his name. 

Uhu. That is likely, for he was, at the time of its 
appearance, engaged upon a translation of Horace, no 
easy task to a man who is at the distance of B.D. 
from his uudergraduateship, and this most likely 
occupied his whole attention. It is published now, 
an excellent impalement of the poet. 

Civetta. Well, my dear sir, the notion of his 
manifesto is that no inquiry is necessary. Oxford is 
ready to establish branch colleges of her own all over 
the country. — " Mrs. Oxford, if I may say so without 
rudeness, I don't like your pie." — " 0, Mr. Bull, don't 
mention it ; shall I assist you to a little more ? " 

Uhu. The two Universities have to bestow about 
two hundred thousand pounds in fellowships, more 
than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in Church 
preferment, which all goes to Fellows ; they have 
nearly forty thousand of revenue ; the rent of college 
rooms produces to them nearly thirty thousand ; 
thirty-three thousand pounds more goes to Fellows in 
the shape of college fees ; there are the salaries of 



IGNORANCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 83 

about forty heads of colleges and halls, and about 
ninety Professors. There is all the money paid by 
students to Fellows for private teaching. 

Buho. This money is the head and front of Uni- 
versity offending. Those rascally burglars are excited 
to activity by this. 

Aziola. They want to scrape it all out of the mud 
in which we keep it safely buried, to deprive our 
Mistress Ignorance of every penny, and pour it out 
before their Idol, Knowledge. They say, here you 
have the means of forming Educational establish- 
ments upon a grand scale, thoroughly complete. 

Ulula. Yes, here we have the means, and Enemies 
of Ignorance shall never move them from our keeping. 
What excites you, Buho ? 
Buho. They are polking ! 

Glaux. Free grammar-schools, by-the-bye, are in 
a glorious condition ; following their founders' views 
as little as some colleges. I have facts upon that 
subject in my Notes on Education of the Poor. 
Why, sir, there are no less than two thousand four 
hundred endowed grammar schools in this country* 
provided for the sons of artisans and other riff-raff ; 
all in magnificent condition. Two thousand of them 
do not educate four hundred of such scum. The press 
— as pertinacious as a parish fire-engine when nothing 
is the matter — squirted its black venom at one of 
these some time ago ; a grammar school which used 
to educate its eighty pupils and support three masters, 

Q 2 



84 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

but was then supporting one head master, who sacri- 
ficed — for a handsome compensation — none but his 
own two sons to the manes of the founder. 

Screech. My dear Buho, who is polking ? You 
disturb me with your dumb show ; besides, you attack 
my shins. 

Glaux. Another of these free schools, in the Fens, 
suffered from reform fever about a year ago, when 
a charge very properly was levied upon pupils. Some 
busybody proposed to make this charge extremely 
small, but was out-voted, for there rose in the town 
council a good friend of Ignorance, saying, il No ! 
if you do that, we shall be inundated with scholars ! " 

Civetta. Never may dear old England see the day 
when school houses shall fill, and the great inundation 
of scholars pour every morning through the streets of 
her fine towns, rushing and eddying through each 
open school-room door. 

Glaux. Sir, it was a great thing to dam out the 
poor from those endowed schools. The funds have 
grown enormously. All the ragged imps in London 
could be taught out of the funds of Christ's Hospital 
alone. Grow, sir ! the funds may well grow ! 

Ulula. They have a harp, piano, and cornet- 
a-piston ! 

Glaux. Lawrence Sheriffe left the third part of a 
field of twenty-four acres in the parish of Holborn, to 
endow a grammar school at Rugby. It produced then 
8?. ; it is now covered with buildings, and its rental is 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 85 

10,000?. a year. True it is, that although we have 
wrested Rugby also from the patrimony of the poor, 
that place has, in its own way, done us mischief. 
Men like your Arnolds and your Attilas arise sometimes 
to play the part of scourge. We could not he safe 
against the force of many more than the one Dr. Arnold. 
Never mind ; his shoes are buried with him. When 
you think of the foundations absolutely rotted, — rotten 
foundations, you observe the joke, — no, you observe 
nothing : gentlemen, you are positively tedious. 

Ulula. I do not understand this. 

Screech. There, now you hear them laughing ; 
they are tuning for a waltz. 

Ulula. Will some one peep into 

Cf)e Eases' HSratotng l&oom. 

Do you smoke, Buho ? Ah! you should; you'd 
find tobacco soothing. A cigar, Screech ? I must 
indulge myself, or I shall lose my temper. Mrs. U. 
might or might not have approved of this meeting ; 
but I had, at least, the civility to tell her what my 
plans were. I distinctly told her that we should not 
go up-stairs. 

The Owlet (returning in a state of rapture). I 
drank intoxication through the keyhole. They are 
frolicking and dancing ; and it is like a witches' 
sabbath. Gentlemen, I dote on a waltz. 

Aziola. You may well be reminded of a witch's 
sabbath ; for you, of course, know that we are 



86 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

indebted to the healthy imagination of the painters 
in the middle ages, who depicted such scenes, for the 
origin of waltzing. Their bold genius invented waltz 
figures to heighten the Devil's fun upon the Brocken ; 
and a bolder genius transferred their graces to the 
drawing-room, and made that dance to be polite for 
ladies, which was drawn for fiends to make them look 
uncomely. 

Buho. I enjoy a waltz. 

Civetta. Certainly : and above all things it is for 
ball practice that ladies should be trained ; I do not 
say for balls alone, because their sphere of duty also 
should include shirt-buttons and pastry. There 
we stop, however. When the German emperor, 
Charles IV., married at Prague, the father of his 
bride brought to the festival a waggon-load of con- 
jurors. Two, the most eminent of these, Zytho the 
Bohemian, and Gourin the Bavarian, were pitched 
against each other. Zytho then opening his mouth, 
it is said, from ear to ear, ate up his adversary till 
he came upon his shoes, and spat those out, because 
they were not clean. Now, we, like Zytho, can 
devour all the charms and graces of a woman till 
we come upon her understanding, and we spit that 
out. We do, I say, and represent the mouthpiece 
of a nation. 

Aziola. Russet apples half concealed beneath 
leaves from the autumn sun that beats upon an or- 
chard, apples in store, or in a cider press, or glorified 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 87 

as penny pyramids upon the dry plain of a London stall, 
sink into insignificance before the fruit of a stage 
banquet at the opera. The rosiest plate-full of country 
apples would look out of place in company so brilliant. 
How brilliant is beauty at a ball ! How insignificant 
a pippin is the untrained girl who scarcely knows 
another chandelier than the sun, who cannot even 
drop a handkerchief with grace, sings " Where the 

Bee sucks " if you ask her for a song 

Boho. SucJcs, indeed ! vulgar ! 
Aziola. And could not sing an air from Nabu- 
cadonosor, no, sir, not if you bribed her with 
the promise of a husband for it. The ball-room is 
the proper exhibition-room for female elegance and 
worth. For the ball-room our wives ought to be 
trained, and thither we must go, and, if we are wise, 
do go, to seek them out. Hymen is delicate and 
lights his torch at the wax candles oftener than at 
the homely composite or the camphine. 

Screech. Were any man to tell me that the 
brilliance of woman at a ball, delightful as it is, 
will not content us, — that the enjoyment she affords 
there, like the banquet furnished for your Brocken 
witches, will amuse the senses with a ghostly 
supper and still let the hunger gnaw ; were any 
man, sir, to attempt, by such an argument, to 
hit me in the stomach, I would snatch up in defence 
a rollingpin. Our wives and daughters, are not 
only to be visions of delight, they are not only by 



05 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

their songs and dances, and by piquant words and 
gestures to delight our ears and eyes, but they are 
by their pudding-crust to win the approbation, the 
devotion also of our bellies. When any of my nieces 
marry they shall each receive from me as bridal gift 
a little parcel of white satin shoes with shirt and 
brace-buttons in all their toes, and in the middle 
of the parcel, as its kernel, they shall find a 
rollingpin. 

Civetta. Francesca Romana was a good sort of 
saint, devoted to her husband's comfort. Of course it 
did not matter how she spent her time, so long as 
she did not let his chops burn or his pudding become 
sodden. Being a saint, she spent a large part of the 
day in devotion, but rose from her knees instantly if 
the pot boiled, or baby cried, or if her husband called 
out for a button. Once she was called away eleven 
times before she could reach the end of one verse in 
the Bible, and, at last, on her return, she found that 
verse lighted up supernaturally. Her principle was 
that " a wife and a mother must quit her God at the 
altar and find him in her household affairs." 

Buho. Whether some of our well-trained wives 
would carry that principle to the extent of quitting 
their God at the looking-dass is doubtful. 

Screech. Well, if not, we have the beauty as a 
recompense, and many a grace acquired by patient 
study. It is study bestowed to a good purpose. Look 
at the ladies who have made themselves remarkable by 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 89 

other studies, — say, Mrs. Somerville, Miss Martineau. 
My young friend Captain Little dances with the foot 
of a master, wears miniature boots and trousers 
absolutely faultless, he has the breeding of a gentle- 
man — and received last week in return for twenty- 
four postage stamps, a bottle of Crinilene from Miss 
Dean, who promises him whiskers in three weeks. 
Fancy the Captain waltzing with Miss Martineau, a 
lady who has been caricatured in a leading Magazine 
with a large cat upon her shoulder. 

Aziola. Why, the silliest of men can laugh at her, 
for meddling with political economy, welfare of com- 
munities, and all such stuff. Her novels I have read, 
and one need only name Deerbrook ; let any man 
of sense compare that work with a true standard 
woman, and he will know the measure of Miss M.'s 
deficiency in qualities which give true lustre to her 
sex. There are young women perversely educated, 
who have read the book repeatedly, possessed with 
the delusion that it softens all the hard lumps in their 
hearts, and tends to make them what they ought to 
be — poor girls ! 

Boho. I know nothing about that ; but I won't 
hear Miss Martineau abused. She has proved 
Mesmerism in the teeth of opposition. The case 
of her pet cow, that she brought forward last 
year 

Aziola. And this year her pet donkey 

Buho. Eh ! I haven't heard of that. 



90 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Ulula. A fact, sir ; she has been seen seated in 
mesmeric state upon a most enormous donkey, that 
eats Bibles up instead of thistles. 

Buno. Bless me ! Doesn't it choke itself? 

Aziola. no ! mesmeric animals have enormous 
width of swallow. 

Buho. Sir ! Now, I tell you what, you don't believe 
in Mesmerism ? I do. But only fools discredit 
homoeopathy. For width of swallow, I should say 
the allopaths are extraordinary! 

Ulula. Buho, it is not wholly beside our purpose 
to branch out into this subject. Perhaps you can 
produce some facts. 

Buho. Myself, if you call me a fact. I wouldn't 
believe in this sort of thing if I didn't see with my 
own eyes, as it were ; for a man ought not to know or 
believe anything but what he sees. Now a plain 
statement decides the question. Sir, from a boy I 
always hated having my nails cut. It hurts me, it 
fidgets me. I couldn't cut 'em myself, and always 
swore at any one else who cut 'em for me. 

Ulula. Well! 

Buho. Well, I was advised to try homoeopathy. 
What 's the result ? Now, when I find it necessary, 
sir, I take the billionth of a thought of steel going to 
bed, and find my nails cut in the morning. 

Aziola. Possibly your wife 

Buho. Sir, my wife, or your wife, or the candle- 
stick's wife, is beside the purpose. Bless my soul, 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 91 

sir ! I tell you a fact out of my own experience, and 
you insult me grossly if you question it. 

Ulula. It is conclusive. Gentlemen, if you please 
we will return to our discussion of the ladies. We 
were talking of Miss Martineau and earnest women. 
Our clerical friend, Zumacaya, has, I see, a paper in 
his hand 

Buho. If there is any cant that I despise, it is the 
hack word " earnest." Tell me that any body is an 
earnest person, tell me that she has the plague, it 
is all one, I keep my distance. I knew a young 
fellow who was famous for his dashing wit, a first-rate 
quiz, before he married, by some oversight, a girl 
just tinged, ever so little tinged, with earnestness. 
There was no enthusiasm in her, sir ; she never 
idolised a waistcoat or became enraptured at a joke, 
and after he was married his wit burned so dead, 
that he absolutely told me he had left off what 
he called sneering at his fellow men. " Fellow 
men," how soon he picked up his cant words, poor 
devil ! 

Civetta. No, my dear sir, the man is rash who 
takes to wife an earnest woman, unless, indeed, he 
have the virtue of St. Sebald, who, for want of 
wood, could keep his fire alive with icicles. 

Zumacaya. Who are the men by whom we are 
antagonised ? Let Englishmen be on their guard 
against encroachments favoured by the Papist and 
the Unitarian. I appeal to the religious feeling of 



92 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

the country ; and although, so doing, I produce those 
Xoyovg at:a.vdu>SeiQ, thorny arguments, which it is hy 
no means pleasant to lay hold of ; still, since they 
really are a furze bush to the British Lion's tail, they 
ought to be appended. I say, then, that, apart from 
our own sense of what is right, we can perceive the 
necessity of ignorance in women, when we find it 
argued down by Papists. What says Fenelon, an arch- 
deceiver, for was he not a Roman Catholic arch- 
bishop ? " It is ignorance," he says, "which renders 
women frivolous." He describes in a highly disre- 
spectful manner female education, and then goes on 
rudely : " Idleness and weakness being thus united 
to ignorance, there arises from this union a pernicious 
taste for amusements. Girls brought up in this idle 
way have an ill-regulated imagination. Their 
curiosity, not being directed to substantial things, is 
turned towards vain and dangerous objects. They 
read books which nourish their vanity, and become 
passionately fond of romances, comedies, and fanciful 
adventures. Their minds become visionary ; they 
accustom themselves to the extravagant language of 
the heroines of romance." 

Screech. Well, sir, and is everything to be 
mechanical, — are all minds to go clothed in frieze, 
with a foot-rule sticking obtrusively out of the mind's 
pocket ? May not the pretty nonsense of our fairy 
damsels, their delightful enthusiasm, their emphatic 
little billets, in which every delicious, heavenly, or 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 93 

barbarous Nothing is ecstatically underlined, may 
they not still give innocent delight ? 

Zumacaya. They may, sir, and they will : No Popery. 
While we are talking of this sort of people, it will be 
well to note how this benighted dignitary of the 
Romish Church, supports another false and specious 
cry raised by our enemies. Just hear Fenelon's 
notions about education, and you may well hold up 
your hands and mutter, he was born two hundred 
years ago : " The greatest defect of common educa- 
tion is, that we are in the habit of putting pleasure 
all on one side, and weariness on the other ; all 
weariness in study, all pleasure in idleness. Let us 
try to change this association ; let us render study 
agreeable ; let us present it under the aspect of 
liberty and pleasure ; let us sometimes permit study 
to be interrupted by little sallies of gaiety. These 
interruptions are necessary to relax the mind." 
Again, " An austere and imperious air must be 
avoided, except in cases of extreme necessity, for 
children are generally timid and bashful. Make 
them love you ; let them be free with you ; let them 
not hide their thoughts from you. Be indulgent to 
those who conceal nothing from you. It is true, that 
this treatment will enforce less the restraint of fear, 
but it will produce confidence. We must always 
commence with a conduct open, gay." 

Ulula. What next, I wonder, after a gay school- 
master or schoolmistress ! Can we contrive a climax? 



94 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Zumacaya. yes, if we go among the Unitarians, 
we shall find folly quite as rife. This is how 
Channing talks, one of the lights of a sect 
certainly not Christian : " Honour man from the 
beginning to the end of his earthly course. Honour 
the child. Welcome into being the infant, with a 
feeling of its mysterious grandeur, with the feeling 
that an immortal existence has begun, that a spirit 
has been kindled which is never to be quenched. 
Honour the child. On this principle all good educa- 
tion rests. Never shall we learn to train up the 
child till we take it in our arms, as Jesus did, and 
feel distinctly that ' of such is the kingdom of 
Heaven.'" In that short sentence is taught the 
spirit of the true system of education ; and for want 
of understanding it, little effectual aid, I fear, is 
yet 

Buho. Fire and fury ! I have cut myself paring 
my thumb-nail. You, Screech, why did you dare me 
to do it ? 

Screech. I will pull some nap out of your 
hat, — ah ! you have court plaster, and your hat, 
I dare say, is of silk. 

Aziola. I don't like hats, do you ? nobody does. 
Is it not odd that we have persevered in wearing 
hats until beavers — which, to the mere naturalist, 
are peculiarly interesting — have almost become 
extinct — and this in deference to habit, every man 
against his own conviction. Well, sir, if custom be so 



THE LADIES* DRAWING ROOM. 95 

powerful in ordering the furniture outside our heads, 
in spite of us, it will prevail no less in maintaining 
those internal fittings to which men have been for 
centuries accustomed, and with which we are content. 

Screech. Mr. Chairman, the young gentleman at 
the bottom of the table has intimated to me that his 
father's house is next door to a ladies' school, and 
that he has observations to communicate. 

Ulula. Precisely what we want. 

The Owlet. The name of the school is 

Ulula. To be disguised in your notes, Mr. Se- 
cretary. 

Screech. Certainly, sir ; I take great pains to 
avoid using other people's names. 

The Owlet. Moira House Seminary, kept by three 
sisters, the Misses Mimminipimmin. Miss Clotho, 
the elder, is a good disciplinarian, who teaches what 
are called the usual branches of an English education. 
Miss Atropos is somewhat good-tempered, and super- 
intends the housekeeping department. Miss Lachesis, 
the youngest, differs from her sisters in not wearing a 
cap, and is the general instructor in things elegant. 
If you had been with me last night, when I peeped 
through the school-room window, which opens upon 
our yard, you would have seen the two remaining 
teachers. They were eating bread and butter, and 
drinking small beer, by the light of a dip candle; 
for last night the Misses M. had company. Six ladies 
in a fly drank tea with them, I know ; and so 



96 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

the teachers, of course, had their supply sent to them 
down-stairs. You would have been amused, had you 
been with me ! One, a comely maiden, has a sweet- 
heart somewhere labouring to earn her for his wife, 
a fact at which Miss Lachesis especially is aggra- 
vated. And certainly that teacher, as Miss Lachesis 
has said to me, is quite unfit for her position. Her 
thoughts are evidently all abroad : she lets the chil- 
dren play, and has no nerve for discipline ; indeed, 
as Miss Clotho says, she is too young. Last night, 
she was eating her bread and butter with a good- 
tempered face, while Mademoiselle Mignon — she is 
but a sickly little thing — was choking over the small 
beer. Mademoiselle is far away from home, and has 
no lover to hear her complaints. She did not know 
how much I overheard of them ; but the French are 
so ridiculously sensitive. 

The school, from what Miss Clotho says, I know 
to be exceedingly well-regulated. Of course nothing 
male, except u approved good masters," can intrude 
upon the perfect femininity of that establishment, 
I strictly believe that they use female writing, female 
arithmetic 

Ulula. Which every husband knows to be beyond 
male comprehension 

The Owlet. And female grammar — the existence 
of a masculine gender being denied, or suppressed, 
in every language. But I can only guess at 
these things. It is true, indeed, that I have some- 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 97 

times endeavoured to peep through the window 
during school-time ; but the elevation of my head 
above the compo-horizon of the window-sill, has 
caused such instantaneous stir and titter among all 
the young ladies, as if indeed their eyes had all been 
most attentive to the window at the time of popping 
up my head, that I have been too glad to pop it down 
again before Miss Clotho saw me. I, too, feel some 
terror at Miss Clotho. After my last attempt at 
such a peep, while I was creeping off, I heard Miss 
Clotho 's tongue busily punishing the English gover- 
ness for suffering the children to make a commotion ; 
so I know that she can scold a full-grown person, and I 
do not wish to come under the stroke of her jaw-bone. 

Peeping about a ladies school is very pleasant 
notwithstanding. Out of a garret window I can look 
down upon a corner of their garden, and when the 
girls, in play-time, are not walking in procession 
through the country, I can see them there. It is an 
extraordinary fact, that all these girls seem some- 
times to go mad. Whether it has anything to do with 
the moon I do not know. 

Civetta. It may be so. " Kirckringius knew a 
young gentlewoman " who was at new moon only 
skin and bone, and stirred not out of doors ; but 
as the moon grew she gathered flesh, until at 
the full of the moon she went abroad commanding of 
all men admiration for her plumpness and exceeding 
beauty. 



98 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

The Owlet. Young gentlewomen being thus sen- 
sitive to lunar influence, it may be to the moon that 
I must look for the reason why there should come 
every now and then a day when the young ladies, 
commonly so tranquil, scamper up and down the 
walks, shriek, jump, yea climb upon the walls, while 
the French governess and the English governess 
struggle in vain against the fever ; and it seems as 
though all the Queen's riot acts and all the Queen's 
men could 'nt restore quiet to those girls again. 
Twice, however, I have seen an instantaneous calm 
follow the tempest, and have each time observed in a 
few minutes, that Miss Clotho came into the garden 
dressed as from walk. Commonly, however, all is 
tranquil. 

Civetta. As it should be in an academic grove. With 
graceful gestures little hoops are being launched from 
sticks ; or knots of girls with delicate complexions, 
shunning the spring sun, sit under the 

" Laburnums, dropping wells of fire," 

from which they do not apprehend a scorching. Others 

in pairs pace up and down with meditative steps, and 

earnestly conversing look extremely confidential. 

Arms interlaced bespeak in these — 

" The tender friendships made 'twixt heart and heart, 
"When the dear friends have nothing to impart." 

Far from that ; — I would scorn it, sir ; — you are 
quite wrong ; I am not sneering at this tenderness. 
Brisk or steady, young or old, and whether in a 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 99 

state of natural simplicity, ignorant, or sophisticated, 
there is something in every woman at which no true 
man can laugh. In the sweet honied flow of youth 
there is a charm, some part of which is not lost, 
although time and careless keeping should induce 
acetous fermentation, as they often do. In the most 
vinegary woman there is still a flavour of the warm 
sun on the fruit. The man who blames our friends up- 
stairs as frivolous, acknowledges that any one of them 
has that within her which can make her stronger than a 
strong man in the spirit of endurance and self-sacrifice. 

Ulula. And we who love the frivolous will own 
even of learned women, that if they be unfit for 
partners, they are very fit for friends. 

Civetta. A bit of pure air sticks about a woman, let 
her go where she may, and be she who she may ; 
the girl most deeply sunk in misery and vice retains it, 
and can rise by it when opportunity shall come. A little 
creature lives far out at sea upon the gulf-weed, — 
Litiopa is its name, — often there comes a wave that 
sweeps it from its hold and forces it into the deep. 
It carries down with it an air-bubble, and glues to this 
a thread which, as the bubble rise3 to the surface, it 
extends. The little bit of air, before it breaks out of 
its film, floats on the water, and is soon attracted by 
the gulf-weed, towards which it runs and fastens 
alongside ; up comes the Litiopa by her thread then, 
and regains the seat for which she was created. 
A bit of pure air sticks like this about all women ; 

h 2 



100 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

from the Queen on her throne, down to the world- 
abandoned creature on the pavement. 

Bcho. Prosy, sir ! 

Screech. Not at all. Suffer me to observe that 
in greasing your hair you have allowed a drop to fall 
upon that elegant blue satin waistcoat. Considered in 
one point of view, it may be filthy for men or women 
to make their heads look like a sop in the pan, but 
I am not so narrow-minded that I cannot see a case 
like this in all its bearings. With you I defile my 
head on principle, to support a branch of female 
manufacture. Were our heads in a cleaner condition, 
there would be no need for those fancy cloths which 
ladies throw over our chairs and couches to protect 
them from defilement by themselves and us, anti- 
hog 's-larders or anti-macassars. Protection is re- 
quired for our crochet- workers. The object at Moira 
House has been to educate young ladies in such 
elegant accomplishments as shall not hurt their brains. 
Our object is to put down learned women. Setting 
aside all other obvious objections, it is enough to say 
that we cannot afford to have our women's brains well 
filled. If they begin to stick pins into us at our own 
fireside, in the shape of all manner of familiar allusions 
to Godegisile, to Verazzani, or the Chickahominies, 
what will become of us, what shall we do ? we can no 
longer presume upon wise hums and hahs. Well- 
informed silence may be practised out of doors, but at 
the family dinner we should be dragged daily at the 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 101 

tail of a wife's conversational chariot ; for what a 
Woman knows, and something more, she will inevitahly 
talk about. 

Civetta. In such an event, there would be no 
alternative left for us but to imitate the practice of the 
weak forts on the coast of Barbary, which, when a 
ship is entering their harbour, send on board a request 
that she will be so good as to abstain from firing, 
because if the fortress be compelled to return any 
salute, it will be forced to do so at the risk of 
knocking its own walls to pieces. 

Screech. The object of instructing ladies in 
crochet, knitting, working upon cloth and velvet, is to 
enable them to occupy their vacant moments in a harm- 
less manner. Hour after hour, the fingers twist me- 
chanically upon wool, when they might be dangerously 
occupied with pen or pencil, and the eyes bent upon 
Mrs. Warren's pictures of slippers and polka jackets, 
are prevented from discovering how many hours 
might be employed in musty book-work. The cover 
of a music-stool (result of a month's leisure) may be 
worth half-a-crown more than the materials employed 
in it ; but the gain of the working lady has not been 
the mere half-crown ; she has gained emancipation 
from all tedious occupation ; she has protected that 
innocence, that sweet simplicity of brain, which 
makes the charm of female conversation, and causes 
us so frequently to feel, however little we may know 
that we unbend when talking to a woman. 



102 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Ulula. Other accomplishments there are which 
lead a few fair students, now and then, beyond our 
bounds ; but that is not their object, nor is it usually 
their result. Drawing, for example, is not taught, I 
hope, and, judging from results, I think, with a desire 
to awaken, through the eye, the intellect to spiritual 
thoughts, though some misguided women make 
exceptions of themselves. Ladies learn drawing, as 
they learn crochet, to give mechanical employment 
to their fingers, which shall not engage their brains. 
If they sketch from nature, it is very well ; for 
gentlemen can hold their pencils while they receive, 
without awkwardness, the flattery for which, of 
course, all women were created. Naked truth is to 
be looked at only by the coarser sex. It is not 
intended that the eye shall perceive more than the 
lines and colours to be imitated ; and the landscape 
is worked upon paper with different tools, indeed, but 
with the same feeling as if it were a watchpocket, or 
kettle-holder. Paintings from nature, however, are 
in less request than large chalk heads and little 
album drawings, famous for the careful delicacy of 
the finger-work, and the complete absence of thought. 
Dear femininities ! of which the dearest are those 
gorgeous little birds perched upon pencil marks, 
whose only habitat appears to be the album, and 
which arc hatched out of no eggs but those which Mr. 
Newman sells in nests of rosewood or mahogany. 

Screech. Then music is most wisely taught on the 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 103 

same principle. Music, as an intellectual pursuit, 
would be a bore in woman. A wife who strums 
Lieder ohne Worte, and looks down upon your taste 
for the Drum Polka, will not do for you, my dear sir, 
at any price. Thanks to a judicious plan of education, 
such an affliction rarely falls to a man's share. The 
use of music, as of drawing, is that it occupies only 
the fingers. It is better than drawing, because it is 
an art exercised in full dress ; a gentleman turns over 
the leaves instead of holding the pencils, so far they are 
much the same ; but the voice is audible in all parts of 
the room, and can be admired by more people at the 
same time, than a drawing which can be seen only 
by two or three together. The words of songs, being 
moreover for the most part asseverations of great 
tenderness of heart, and capability of reciprocating 
an attachment, are convenient for the purpose of 
advertising to all gentlemen, in a sufficiently loud 
key, An eligible Heart to Let ; while the post of 
observation occupied upon the music-stool invites all 
people to inspect the premises. Many a heart, in 
fact, has been engaged upon the faith of such adver- 
tisements, and many happy marriages have followed 
upon such engagements. 

Aziola. Such triumphs, and the time got rid of 
in the finger-work of practising, are the great objects 
of music, as it is taught by the Mimminipimmins. 
That any of the young ladies sent out of their 
school care whether they hear Fidelio or Lucia di 



104 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

Lammermoor, when they go to the opera, is doubtful ; 
if they have a choice, I think they prefer Lucia, 
which is presented to them at the Haymarket, year 
after year, while Fidelio has only just been raked 
out of a dusty corner in the operatic lumber-room. 
Donizetti certainly is quite the ladies' man. 

Civetta. Languages, too, are taught at Moira 
House, but as accomplishments, of course. Considered 
as acquirements, they are used by bookish, dusty men 
to widen the range of their reading in poetry, history, 
science, or whatsoever their hobby may be. But 
ladies are lost if they ride hobbies, and they have 
none, if a few ideas about the moon in a drawer 
up-stairs, and some enthusiasm about Byron, be not 
sufficient to convict them of a taste for poetry. 
Languages to them, therefore, are not acquirements, 
but accomplishments. They are Italian and French. 
Italian is used as subsidiary to piano performance ; 
it is the language of Donizetti, and it is the medium 
through which other nations ought to speak. It is 
the language in which Beethoven's Adelaide ought 
to be sung. And I dare say, " mein lieber 
Augustin," it is the language in which you may 
figure as Mio caro Agosti-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i i-i-no.* 
Italian is also important as the language, not of 

* For the other i's and hyphens we want space. Would they 
be acceptable in a companion volume ? Of such a publication, 
since no writer would expect anything for its composition, a very 
thick lump could be sold for a few shillings. Singers are ap- 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 105 

Dante or Ariosto, but of the opera libretti. French 
is to ladies almost more important than Italian, as it 
is the language of their common life. I do not mean 
that they speak French entirely ; they have not been 
taught to do that, and it is not fit that they should. 
Nor, indeed, can their brains work it off in fragments 
through the medium of ordinary conversation ; in the 
hurry of speaking they remember very tiny bits of it, if 
we compare their spoken with their written language. 
Civetta. The written language of the women of 
England is a great subject and will be treated in full 
by future antiquaries in America when writing about 
ancient England. It is the finishing touch of delicate 
flattery that we not only are allowed the relaxation 
of considering ourselves clever when we talk to ladies ; 
but the dear creatures tumble helplessly before us 
in their letters ; and confess themselves unable even 
to express their thoughts in any single tongue. Buho, 
my dear fellow, we are friends ; I never get three- 
cornered notes, but you do ; show me one. Ah, 
there 's a good fellow ! I will not betray your con- 
fidence ; you have one about you I can see. No, 
I will not betray your confidence. Do, please ; the 
little pink one that just peeps out of your splendid 

plauded, and paid also, when they issue flourishes in a considerable 
volume ; but the Printer, doubtful whether the same favour 
would extend to him, desires the guarantee of a subscription list. 
Parties desirous of purchasing a thick book devoted exclusively to 
flourish, are requested, therefore, to apply personally or by letter to 
the Devil, at the Printer's office. 



106 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

waistcoat pocket ; I know you are engaged to Miss 
G., and ought not to show her notes, but I dare say- 
that one has nothing in it. Thank you, the argument, 
I thought, would be convincing. What a strong 
perfume musk is ! you might use the lady's notes to 
scent your clothes drawer. Never thought of that ? 
yes, to be sure ; of course it 's a good idea. Ah, 
now, how prettily this lisps along ! 

" Mon cher, Je fus vexed que je was not at home 
ce soir. Callez demain, mon petit, at the same heure, 
and I shall be heureuse. Addio. Yotre. Margue- 
rite Green." 

Ulula. Why, that was last night. Did you see her, 
and did she tell you nothing about coming hither ? 
It is very odd ; she is sure to be up-stairs. 

Buho. I propose that this meeting do adjourn. 

Ulula. But, gentlemen, I told my wife, distinctly, 
that we should remain here in the dining-room, 
because we had important business to discuss. 
Shall we permit our characters to be stained with 
inconsistency? Moreover, I notice that they have 
not been dancing for some time. All is quite still. 

Buho. I propose that this meeting do adjourn. 

Screech. Impatient Buho ! Well, you show 
your sense at any rate in seeking a young wife, why 
should you not ? Besides Miss Green acknowledges 
to thirty-one, and you are, I imagine, fifty-five ; so 
there is only a difference of ten years at the utmost ; 
for it is another sweet acknowledgment of female 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 107 

ignorance, that ladies, like the savages, cannot count 
higher than twenty, and so, after twenty two or three, 
become confused about their ages. Dear creatures ! 
how much more to our purpose all this is, than that 
a girl should be kept at home and trained to know all 
about Titian, to tease us with classic music, to dance 
with gaiety as if it were a frolic, talk about Spenser, 
Calderon, Tasso, Schiller, Moliere, as if they were her 
common gossiping acquaintance, and look cross at our 
soft nothings meant to natter her ! How much better 
this is, than that girls and boys, till puberty, should 
study side by side, and after puberty the girls continue 
studying for years more, under what the cant of the day 
calls the guidance of an earnest man at home ! 

Aziola. No doubt the Education-mongers think 
that it will matter little whether man or woman be 
the teacher, when there shall be what he would 
recognise as a supply of women competent to teach. 
Women there are about the country, and not few, 
who have been shameless enough to forget their sex, 
and transgress customary rules. There are women 
who have gained for themselves an infamous notoriety 
as successful naturalists, students of fine art, or — 
to use another hack term — sterling writers ; and 
there are in private life a great many strong-minded 
women, who claim what they call a just position in 
society. 

Civetta. There are many, sir, of these no doubt ; 
but do not fear ; measured beside our population, 



108 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

they are few. For centuries they will be few, for 
our opponents cannot get at them wholesale. Dull 
books they very properly refuse to read, and your 
human progress publications are insufferably dull. 
Spoken to they cannot be, for any language except 
flattery would be insulting to a lady's ear. They 
might indeed be hooted out of some few habits by 
small boys, according to the device employed, Mon- 
strelet tells us, by a friar, who paid little ragamuffins 
with pennies and pardons for running after any lady 
in a steeple head-dress. The friar had spent his 
eloquence in vain against the strength of fashion, but 
the boys soon achieved their triumph, and the ladies 
brought their steeples to the church, where the priest 
made a bonfire of them. But, except upon a few exter- 
nal matters, in our case the small-boy-cautery is quite 
impossible. Arm in arm with the ladies we can look 
our rivals boldly in the face. Beauty's faith is plighted 
to us, and she will be true. 

Ulula. Buho, you are impatient for that arm in 
arm. For my own part, I disapprove of this abandon- 
ment of principle. Here is a deep trick of my wife's 
to tantalise us, when she knows that I distinctly said 
we should not go up-stairs. 

Buho. I propose that this meeting do adjourn. 

The Owlet. I second. 

Screech. There can be no doubt, Mr. Chairman, 
that when you put this motion it will be unanimously 
carried. Nevertheless, my opinion is, that on appear- 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. 109 

ing in the drawing-room we shall look very foolish. 
We have heard many arrivals, and a whole autumn of 
rustling 

Civetta. And the present stillness is portentous. 
We might be in the centre of a hurricane. Ulula, 
what do you say ? 

Ulula. Since Buho presses his motion, and the 
public feeling is in favour of its being carried, I can 
only acquiesce. I would propose, however, that we 
be not too precipitate. Let us adjourn in the first 
place softly to the first-floor lauding, where, perhaps, 
our young friend will again peep, and ascertain the 
reason of this stillness. 

Civetta. Very good, sir ; and that having been 
ascertained, we constitute you Patamankowe. 

Ulula. What in the world is that ? 

Civetta. The Patamankowe is a chief of Boni in 
Celebes, whose actions all beholders are obliged to 
imitate. When he sits they sit, and when he stands 
they stand, if he wipe his nose they wipe their noses. 
If he hunt and get a fall, all who ride hunting with 
him fall when he does ; when he bathes the whole 
court bathes, and any passer-by, who sees him bath- 
ing, must immediately plunge, clothes and all, into the 
water. When we see you plunge into the drawing- 
room, we are prepared to follow, sir. We regulate 
ourselves by you. 

Ulula. Well, follow softly, then. They seem to 
have no gentlemen, and they have been dancing only 



110 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 

by fits. * * * Listen ! It is all perfectly still, 
yet certainly they are not gone. 

The Owlet. Here is certainly some mystery. 
Hush ; don't cough ; I can see nothing through the 
keyhole. 

Ulttla. Surely they are gone, yet how they went 
without our hearing them I cannot comprehend ! 
Hush ! Let me open the door quietly and peep. 
I cannot hear a sound. Hush ! 

Draw my head back in a hurry ? I should think 
so. 'Tis as dangerous as peeping in upon Miss 
Clotho's schoolroom. Well, I think I was not seen. 
What this assembly means I cannot in the remotest 
way imagine. There is a large party of ladies all at 
one end of the room, sitting on chairs and ottomans 
and at each other's feet, working on slippers, socks, 
watchpockets, and so forth ; my wife sits on a 
high chair among them like a president, at work on 
an enormous patchwork counterpane. Three musi- 
cians in a corner by themselves are the only men, 
and I suppose they are there that the ladies may 
dance now and then when they get tired. They 
are evidently bent upon some conspiracy, which is to 
be carried out by means of knitting-pins and needles. 
We had better go down stairs again. That is my 
wife's step. She saw me and thought I beckoned, 
no doubt. Hide in the back-room for one minute. 
She thinks I have something to tell her. Farther 
off ! she is at the door. 



THE LADIES' DRAWING ROOM. Ill 

You may come forward, my dear friends, we are 
forgiven, — thanked. This is a first meeting of the 
Dove Association ; Margaret is there, and the ladies 
will permit you to be present, although gentlemen 
have been excluded by the rules. The good creatures 
thought they could have also their committee, and 
desiring universal peace, have formed a Peace Asso- 
ciation, called the Doves. These ladies will meet 
at stated times to work for the great cause. With 
the produce of their toil it is their plan to furnish a 
bazaar ; and whether they succeed or not, will you 
not kiss the little satin slippered feet, that wish to 
stamp the cannons into powder ? 

The Select Committee for the Defence of Igno- 
rance co-operated during the remainder of the evening 
with the Dove Association, under the presidency of 
the three musicians. The Secretary, however, begs 
to state, that when called upon to produce a report, it 
was thought better, by the Dove Association, that 
the piece should not be loaded with a ball. The 
ladies, also, have forbidden him to state at what hour 
the proceedings terminated. They gain no end by 
this, for any one can draw his own conclusion. 

THE END. 



LONDON : 
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 





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